Songoftheday 7/26/22 - Memories are just where you laid them, drag the waters 'til the depths give up their dead...

 

 

"Hemorrhage (In My Hands)" - Fuel

from the album Something Like Human (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #30 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 12

 

Today's song comes from the alternative hard rock band Fuel, who had come together in central Pennsylvania after starting in Tennessee in the late 1980s as Small The Joy. Lead guitarist/songwriter Carl Bell, singer Brett Scallions, bass player Jeff Abercrombie and drummer Jody Abbott (later replaced by Kevin Miller) released a series of three indie EPs in the mid-1990's before being signed to Epic Records, where they put out an EP Hazleton (named after another Pennsylvania city) in 1997 to create buzz for their full-length debut Sunburn a year later. One of the cuts from the record, "Shimmer", was a redo from their indie EP Porcelain, and became a decent rock radio hit in the summer of 1998, going to #2 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart and just missing the pop top-40 on the Hot 100 at #42. The Sunburn album, released in March of 1998, didn't go higher than #77 on the Billboard 200 sales tally in America, but still sold over a million copies.

 

The band released their sophomore effort Something Like Human in 2000. The lead single from the set was the emo-metal ballad "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)", written by Bell, who produced the album with Ben Grosse. The song seems to describe a love lost with the oft-used analogy of a heart that bleeds, leaving the stains on his hands, as sung by Scallions.  Bell (and through him Scallions) treats the breakup like a death, as the music video shows funeral images and has Scallions overemoting like a cross between Rob Thomas and Johnny Rzeznik, even though Bell said it was inspired by a relative's actual death. Either way, the mopey boy vibes are strong, and the band found themselves with their biggest pop success...

"Hemorrhage" became Fuel's sole top-40 pop hit on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart in America in January of 2001. The song was a huge success on rock radio, spending twelve weeks at #1 on the Alternative Rock chart and three weeks at #2 on the Mainstream Rock list. It even made it to the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format chart at #17, and #22 on the Mainstream Top-40 list. Internationally, the song just missed the top-40 in Australia at #46. The Something Like Human album, released in September of 2000, climbed to #17 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending over a year on the chart and going on to sell over two million copies.

The second song pushed to rock radio from the album was "Innocent", which made the top ten on both the Alternative (#4) and Mainstream (#10) Rock charts in Billboard, but only managed to "bubble under" the pop Hot 100 at #113. That was followed by "Bad Day", a softer rock ballad that got a better reception, climbing to #64 on the Hot 100. At radio it went to #28 at Mainstream Top-40 stations, #21 on the Adult Top-40 format, and again made both the Alternative (#12) and Mainstream (#14) Rock lists. The final radio single from the record, the harder-edged album opener "Last Time", was a modest rock radio hit (#21 Mainstream, #25 Alternative). 

 

After a break of three years compounded by a tour injury to Scallions, the group came back in 2003 with their next release Natural Selection.  While hype single "Won't Back Down", which came out at the beginning of the year on the soundtrack to the movie Daredevil, was a minor rock radio hit (#22 Mainstream, #37 Alternative), the main lead single was "Falls On Me", another more reflective ballad, which spend a half year on the Mainstream Rock chart with a high of #9, while just missing the top ten at Alternative radio at #11. Though the song got to #13 on Mainstream Top-40 stations, and #17 on the Adult Top-40 format, the skewed sales-to-airplay ratio had the song stall under the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 chart at #52, their most recent appearance there. The Natural Selection album gave Fuel their highest rank on the Billboard 200 at #15, but dropping out after 14 weeks didn't even go gold (a half-million sold).

Turmoil ensued with the group with Miller and then Scallions leaving, with the latter replaced by Toryn Green (after American Idol's Chris Daughtry passed up an offer from the band) for one last album for Epic, Angels & Devils, in 2007. The album just missed the Billboard 200 top-40 at #42, while the biggest single from the record, "Wasted Time", stopped at #24 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart. 

In an odd turn of events, after Bell's Fuel was dropped from Epic, Scallions eventually reformed Fuel with an entirely new lineup on the metal label Megaforce Records, where he released a single album Puppet Strings, which spent a single week on the Billboard 200 at #77. Two songs from the record made the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard: "Soul To Preach To" went to #30 followed by "Cold Summer" which slipped in at #39, Fuel's most recent rock radio hit. 

Most recently, Bell brought back the Fuel name with Miller drumming and a new lead singer in John Corsale. The new Fuel's most recent album, Anomaly, came out in 2021. 

(7/10)

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Here's the band performing on Letterman...

Next up, in a televised concert...

and lastly, on VH1's Storytellers...

 Up tomorrow: An anthem for this former Mouseketeer these days.