Robbed Hit of the week 5/23/22 - Eric Heatherly's "Flowers On The Wall"...

 

 

"Flowers On The Wall" - Eric Heatherly

from the album Swimming In Champagne (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #50

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from singer/songwriter Eric Heatherly, who grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, playing in bands before heading to Nashville to kickstart his country music career. After some backup gigs, Heatherly was signed to Mercury Nashville Records, where he released his debut album Swimming In Champagne. Although he co-wrote ten of the eleven tracks on the album, it was the one he didn't that was released as the lead single. It was a cover of the country classic "Flowers On The Wall", which was a top ten hit on both the country and pop charts for the vocal group the Statler Brothers in 1966. That song was pretty ahead of its time back then, with its percussive rock cred on its sleeve, but Eric went to update the sound to get played on millennial Nashville radio, with the help of producer Keith Stegall, who was a common collaborator with Alan Jackson (today's SOTD artist). The iconic drum pattern remains intact, as does the electric guitar lick, but it does stay pretty faithful to the original. Which is fine, since the lyrics about how "really, I'm doing fine after our breakup" translate to any moment in time, and Eric's baritone suits the song nicely...

While Heatherly's version of "Flowers On The Wall" rose all the way to #6 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart, the record stalled right at the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 in America in August of 2000. Internationally, the single peaked at #3 on the Canadian Country chart. The Swimming In Champagne album, released in April of that year, went to #157 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #17 on the Country Albums list. 

Unfortunately for Eric, this was at the time when Mercury Nashville was being folded into the great merger of Universal Records, leaving the promotion of his album flat. His second single, title track "Swimming In Champagne" which Eric wrote with drummer Richard Carpenter, didn't even make the country radio top-40, stopping at #46. The Chris Isaak-like ballad deserved better. The third release from the set, the rollicking rockabilly "Wrong Five O'Clock", another collab with Carpenter, did a little better, spending 21 weeks on the chart, topping out at #32. 

Amidst the shakeup, Heatherly's second album in progress was canned by Mercury, and he switched over to the DreamWorks label in 2002, where he released a single, "The Last Man Committed", which scored a fourth top-40 country radio hit at #36. It must not have been enough, for Eric's album on the label was also shelved.

Since then, he's released a couple of albums independently, most recently 2 High 2 Cry in 2010, along with new music on his own website. 

(6/10)

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Here's a live version of the original from the Statler Brothers.

and lastly, Eric performing the song live in 2015...