Songoftheday 8/30/21 - It's nothing it's so normal you you just stand there, I could say so much but I don't go there 'cause I don't want to...

 

 

"Back 2 Good" - Matchbox 20

from the album Yourself of Someone Like You (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #24 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 19

 

Today's song comes from the pop/rock band Matchbox 20, whose debut album Yourself of Someone Like You had already spun off three big top ten pop radio hits with "Push", "3AM", and "Real World". However, since Billboard magazine had a rule for their official Hot 100 pop chart that an entry had to be released as a commercially available retail single, none of them showed up in the top ten although they had the radio points for it. In December of 1998, when the music industry trade bible finally relented and allowed all songs to appear on the list, "Real World" did manage to pop in at #38 as it was ending its radio run.  That wouldn't be an issue anymore for the fourth single from the debut, "Back 2 Good". Written by lead singer Rob Thomas with producer Matt Serletic, the song has Rob singing to a person who they are hooking up with under wraps, explaining how its nobody's business and how everyone doesn't care anyway, a pretty normal state of affairs in the young dating world, whether gay or straight or in between. It's an unassuming song that builds to a big drama crescendo, relying on an intimated understanding both by who Rob's singing to as well as the audience. The music video finds the group in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, including glimpses of a drag show and a leather bar before the cops come to break up all the revelry...

"Back 2 Good" became Matchbox 20's second "official" pop top-40 hit, and fourth big radio success from their debut in May of 1999. The song also climbed to #4 on Billboard's older-skewing Adult Top-40 format chart, and went to #11 on the Triple-A ("Adult Album Alternative", or "hipster rock") radio list. Internationally, the single just missed the top ten at #11 in Canada. The band will return to this series.

(7/10)

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Here's Matchbox 20 live in concert in Atlanta in 2004...

and lastly, a live gig for the iTunes Festival in 2012...

Up tomorrow: Country singer doesn't have distance limits.