Songoftheday 2/8/22 - She sat right down on the sofa says "Where have you been?", I've been waiting for you...

 

 

"Hanginaround" - Counting Crows

from the album This Desert Life (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song comes from the alternative rock band Counting Crows, whose second album Recovering The Satellites had spun off a top ten radio hit in the beginning of 1997 with "A Long December".  A year later, their first live album Across The Wire - Live From New York made the top-20 on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #19. In 1999 the group, led by singer Adam Duritz and adding David Immerglück to their lineup as a multi-instrumentalist, returned with their third effort This Desert Life. The lead single from the set was "Hanginaround", written by the band and produced by David Lowery (of the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven) and Dennis Herring. An upbeat slice of California-style pop, it had more in common with Len's "Steal My Sunshine" than their previous moody work. The song, riding on the piano and bass, bounces around while the lyrics speak of being nothing but lazy with lines like "We spend all day getting sober, just hiding from daylight, watching TV". It fit the rock palette of the time, and with Billboard magazine finally changing their rules to allows radio hits not released as commercial singles to chart, the band found themselves with their first "official" top-40 hit on the Hot 100...

 

 

"Hanginaround" made it into the pop top-40 in January of 2000. The song appeared on both the Alternative (#17) and Mainstream (#37) Rock radio charts in Billboard. But its biggest success was on the Adult Album Alternative (or Triple-A) Rock format, where it spent eight weeks at #1. On the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, it went to #5 and spent a half a year (26 weeks) on the list. Internationally, the single went to #3 in Canada, made the top-40 in New Zealand at #38, and just missed that mark at #46 in the UK. The Desert Life album, released in November of 1999, landed the group their third top ten album at #8 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to move over a million copies. 

 

The follow-up single, "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby", missed the pop Hot 100, but slipped on to the Adult Top-40 list for a week at #40, while rising to #3 on the Triple-A Rock chart. The third release from the set, "All My Friends", was their third consecutive top ten hit on the Triple-A list at #7. Counting Crows will come back to the series in time.

(6/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

First up, the Crows live on Dutch radio in 1999...

 

 Here's the band doing "Hanginaround" in concert at Glastonbury in 2000...

and lastly, for a show in Iowa in 2012...

Up tomorrow: Latin lover moves his ass.