Songoftheday 1/26/22 - She doesn't own a dress her hair is always a mess, if you catch her stealin' she won't confess...
"Meet Virginia" - Train
from the album Train (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17
Today's song comes from the rock group Train, who came together in San Francisco when singer/songwritteer Pat Monahan moved out west from Pennsylvania. Recruiting lead guitarist Jimmy Stafford, rhythm guitarist Rob Hotchkiss, bass player Charlie Colin, and drummer Scott Underwood, the newly-minted Train played the circuit and opened for mid-level acts before releasing their self-titled debut album independently before being signed by Columbia Records, who handled the distribution of the set. Initially released in the beginning of 1998, the first single from the record was "Free", which they wrote and self-produced. At the end of the year, "Free" started getting traction on rock radio, and by the start of 1999, had climbed to #12 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock airplay chart, spending 24 weeks on the list.
Their follow-up, released that spring, was "Meet Virginia". Again written by the band, who produced the song with Curtis Mathewson, it had Pat list off the quirky aspects of his ideal woman, using such descriptive lines as the title of this post, as well as the side note about her parents "Her daddy wrestles alligators, Mama works on carburetors". It was corny but not as corny as their latest material, and it definitely caught your attention for not using the same old love song tropes. Rebecca Gayheart of the movie Jawbreaker starred as the titular woman becoming a waitress for a day it seems...
"Meet Virginia" became Train's first hit on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart, reaching the top-20 in January of 2000. The song made both the Mainstream (#21) and Alternative (#25) rock radio charts. But their biggest success was on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, where it spent five weeks at #2, and spent a full year (52 weeks) on the list. Internationally, the single went to #15 in Canada. The Train album, released back in February of 1998, eventually climbed to #76 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies in the process.
A third release from the Train set, "I Am", didn't reach the Hot 100, but did pop on to the Adult Top-40 chart at #35. Train will be back to the series.
(7/10)
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Next up, on the other side of their hit single boost in 2000...
Fast forward to 2012 performing on Letterman...
This is Train (well, Pat and a whole different "Train") doing a concert in 2018...
Up tomorrow: This trio of pin-up boys love the boob tube.
Comments