(Not-so) Robbed hit of the week 7/25/22 - Vitamin C's "The Itch"

 

 

"The Itch" - Vitamin C

from the album More (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45 (one week)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Vitamin C, aka singer/actress Colleen Fitzpatrick, who had scored a pair of top-40 pop hits from her self-titled debut album in 1999 with "Smile" and "Graduation (Friends Forever)". The following year, she returned with the lead single from her sophomore effort, More, "The Itch". Written by Fitzpatrick with Jimmy Harry and Billy Steinberg, the song is a departure from her indie-pop earlier work to try to fit the dance-pop mold dominated by Britney and Christina at the time. I mean, the main lyrical hook of the track is "I'm feeling the itch again, I need to get tricked again" which is pretty inane. And she's telling her boyfriend that he doesn't give that to her. Oofdah. It's too awkward to even pass as undecipherable, and naturally it didn't get the reception a cooing starlet would get. The music video features actresses Mila Kunis and Kirsten Dunst in clips from the movie Get Over It that Vitamin C appears in but this song isn't even from the film...

While "The Itch" made it to #26 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Top-40 radio chart, the song stalled under the top-40 on the main Hot 100 pop chart in December of 2000. Internationally, her success Down Under continued, going all the way to #6 in Australia and #34 in New Zealand, while peaking at #16 in Canada. The More album, released in January of 2001, stopped at #122 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. Shortly after Elektra Records let her go. 

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 performing the song on the Rosie O'Donnell show...