Songoftheday 11/17/21 -Sometimes I feel like I'm drunk behind the wheel the wheel of possibility, however it may roll give it a spin...

 

 

"Out Of My Head" - Fastball

from the album All The Pain Money Can Buy (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song comes from the rock band Fastball, who scored a huge radio hit in the summer of 1998 with "The Way". However, since the song wasn't released as a commercially-available "single", it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart. The second offering from the album, "Fire Escape", did pop on to the list the week the music trade bible changed the rules to allow album cuts that December, and ended up going to #86; by then it had run its course on radio, peaking at #13 on the Alternative Rock chart, #25 on the Mainstream Rock list, #29 on the Pop Radio chart, and #19 on the Adult Top-40 format list. 

The third release from the album, "Out Of My Head", finally was able to fully take advantage of that chart change in Billboard. Written by lead singer Tony Scalzo and produced by Julian Raymond, the song has Tony singing to a woman he possibly had "friendzoned" while he played the field in order to protect her, but ended up hurting her anyway. He pleads to have her give him a sign if she's still interested, and self-deprecates himself constantly in the process. It's a cloudy but witty slice of jangle-rock in the vein of the Gin Blossoms and Ben Folds, and it caught on with the young "hipster" crowd, like a song from an episode of Friends...

"Out Of My Head" became Fastball's first and only "official" top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart in September of 1999. The song was a huge success on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio format, spending five weeks at #3. Internationally, the single peaked at #11 in Canada. 

The trio returned the following year with their third studio album The Harsh Light Of Day, which made it to #97 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. The lead single from the set, "You're An Ocean", was a moderate success at Adult Top-40 radio, topping out at #16, but frustratingly just missed the Hot 100, "bubbling under" at #101. Leaving Hollywood Records, the trio of Scalzo, Miles Zuniga, and Joey Shuffield have released four more studio albums and a live record on various independent labels, the most recent being The Help Machine in 2019. 

(7/10)

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Here's Fastball performing "Out Of My Head" live in 2007 in their home state of Texas...

Next up, Scalzo and Zuniga doing an acoustic rendition in 2009...

And lastly, the trio on a radio appearance in 2018...

Up tomorrow: This group calls out a ladykiller actor by name.