Songoftheday 4/27/22 - And I can be so insincere making her promises never for real, as long as she stands there waiting wearing the holes in the soles of her shoes...

 

 

 "Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)" - Ninedays

from the album The Madding Crowd (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 21

 

Today's song comes from the rock band Ninedays, who came together in Long Island in the early 1990s. Led by singers/guitarists John Hampson and Brian Desveaux, former metal heads, the pair along with drummer Vincent Tattanelli, bassist Nick Dimichino, and keyboard player Jeremy Dean released their debut album Something To Listen To independently on the Dirty Poet label in 1995. The group recorded two more albums before finally getting signed to the 550 Music label on Sony Music. There they released their fourth effort The Madding Crowd in the spring of 2000, with the song "Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)" as the lead single. Written by Hampson and produced by Nick DiDia, who had worked with Pearl Jam and would go on to produce for Bruce Springsteen, the song was inspired by Hampson's future wife, who he had a tendency to piss off a bunch of times. However, she stuck by him, and the "I absolutely love her when she smiles" line that anchors the chorus was directly from the aftermath of a fight. It's a loud, chunky, pop-rock song in the same mode as Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" with his reliance on the rhythm guitar to carry the weight of the production. The result was their first and biggest success...

 

 "Absolutely" made it all the way into the top ten on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart in July of 2000. The song spent seven weeks at #2 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, while making it to #10 on the Alternative Rock format list. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#3) and New Zealand (#7), and got into the top-40 in Iceland (#20) and Australia (#31), and was a minor hit in the UK at #83. Their The Madding Crowd album, released in May of that year, peaked at #67 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a half million copies.

Despite that success, the reception to the band's follow-up single "If I Am" was cooler. Also written by Hampson, it had exposure from being played on the hit TV show Dawson's Creek, and the music video continued the storyline of "Absolutely", but it stalled down at #68 on the pop Hot 100, although it made a respectable #20 on the Adult Top-40 radio list. 

Timing was not on Ninedays' side, as 550 was shutting its doors by the end of the year, with the group shifted over to Epic, where they released what was supposed to be the lead single for their next album, "Good Friend". This time written by Desveaux, the song rose to #26 on the Adult Top-40 format in 2002, but Epic shelved their So Happily Unsatisfied album, leaving the band to release it back on their own four years later when they won the rights back. Since then, they have released three more albums independently, most recently with Snapshots in 2016.

(7/10)

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Here's the band performing the song live in 2014 opening for the Gin Blossoms...

And rewind a little to 2007 with Hampson doing it acoustically...

Hampson is now teaching school, and here he is giving a very cute slice of the rock life to his students with a bit of his song...

Up tomorrow: Country singer thinks the woman's a little extra.