Songoftheday 4/20/22 -And so we talked all night about the rest of our lives, where we're gonna be when we turn 25...

 

 

"Graduation (Friends Forever)" - Vitamin C

from the album Vitamin C (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from singer and actress Colleen Fitzpatrick, who records under the moniker Vitamin C. Her self-titled debut album had already spun off a top-40 pop hit in the summer of 1999 with "Smile" with reggae artist Lady Saw. Her followup single, "Me, Myself, & I", was an interesting interpolation of the Santana hit from the 70s "No One To Depend On", made the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Top-40 radio chart at #36, but only "bubbled under" the big Hot 100 chart at #120. 

For her third release from the set, Vitamin C took advantage of the upcoming end-of-school season with "Graduation (Friends Forever)". Written by Fitzpatrick with producer Josh Deutsch, the song brings in another borrowed melody, this time going waaaay back for Pachobel's "Canon In D" from the late 1600s. Producers Deutsch and Garry Hughes also dubbed in a choir and for one version snippets of high school seniors from Lyndhurst, New Jersey. The result ended up as "viral" as you could get for the pre-internet era, and Vitamin C found herself with a second hit, even though for me it totally sounded like a rehash of All Saints' "Never Ever"...

"Graduation" became Vitamin C's second top-40 pop hit on the Hot 100 in June of 2000. The song rose to #12 on Billboard's Mainstream Top-40 radio chart, and #23 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Australia (#2), Ireland (#4), and Canada (#7), and made the top-40 in Sweden at #13 and New Zealand at #21. 

A year later, the singer returned with her sophomore effort More. Lead single "The Itch", which tried to recast her as a dance-pop siren like Britney and Christina, and sported a music video featuring Kirsten Dunst and Mila Kunis, but the single stalled below the top-40 on the Hot 100 at #45, although it shot up to #6 in Australia and did decently north of the border in Canada at #16. The More album stopped at #122 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, leading Elektra records to drop her.

Fitzpatrick attempted a comeback on the V2 label in 2003, but after the single "Last Nite", a remake of the indie-rock classic from the Strokes, stiffed in the States, though providing her with her sole chart appearance in the UK at #70, that fell through as well. However by that time Colleen was enjoying a steady stream of work on TV and movies, and eventually landed a job helping to run the music section of the Nickelodeon kids' TV network.

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Here's Vitamin C appearing on the Australian music program The Pepsi Show promoting the single...

and lastly, in 2020, the singer/actress reprised her most-known hit for the COVID-19 era to cap off the first of many terrible years...

Up tomorrow: Irish boy-band needs to repeat itself.