Songoftheday 3/14/22 -Somewhere there's speaking it's already coming in, oh and it's rising at the back of your mind...

 

 

"Everything You Want" - Vertical Horizon

from the album Everything You Want (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 34

 

Today's song comes from the pop/rock band Vertical Horizon, who came together in Washington DC in the early 1990s. College schoolmates Matt Scannell and Keith Kane shortly thereafter moved to Boston, and released their debut album There And Back Again independently in 1992. After a second indie album and a live set, and recruiting drummer Ed Toth and bass player Sean Hurley, the group was signed by RCA Records, where they recorded their third effort Everything You Want in 1999.  The lead single from the album, "We Are", got some traction at rock radio, where it climbed to #21 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart that summer. However the harder post-grunge sound wasn't grabbed by mainstream pop stations yet. That changed with their second release, the title track "Everything You Want". Written by lead singer/guitarist Scannell and produced by Ben Grosse, who specializes in heavy metal music, and Mark Endert, whose forte is more sedate pop sounds, the track has Scannell pining for this messed up woman (a common thing for rock bands of that time) but gets friendzoned by her despite wanting to "help" her. The male savior complex is strong in this one, but it comes from a true place, and her anguish is something many young men (and some women) can relate to. The production was a more electronic version of the mainstream rock that was going around at the time (though there wasn't an official synth player) to be a lighter take on like, say, Live, whose lead singers look kind of similar as it is...

"Everything You Want" climbed all the way to the top of the American pop chart in July of 2000. The song was massive on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio format, spending 14 weeks at #1, while rising to #5 on the Alternative Rock airplay list, lingering there for a half year. Internationally, the single peaked at #6 in Canada, and made the top-40 in New Zealand (#23), Australia (#24), and Iceland (#33), just missing that level in the UK at #42. The Everything You Want album, released in July of 1999, crested at #40 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending a hefty 71 weeks on the list and going on to sell over two million copies. Both Vertical Horizon and the album will return to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's the band performing the song live at Woodstock 99...

Next up, in concert in 2009...

and lastly, Scannell alone with an acoustic guitar...

Up tomorrow: This pop singer plumbs the romantic nether regions.