Songoftheday 7/3/22 - She rolls the window down, and she talks over the sound of the cars that pass us by...

 

 

"Crazy For This Girl" - Evan and Jaron

from the album Evan and Jaron (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 20

 

Today's song comes from twin brothers Evan and Jaron (Lowenstein), who grew up in the Atlanta, Georgia suburbs in an Orthodox Jewish household, starting their music career in that city, releasing two albums on their own before getting signed to Island Records. The duo put out their major-label debut, We've Never Heard Of You Either, in 1998, but it got little notice and they were let go quickly after. However they rebounded up to be recruited to Columbia Records, where they released their self-titled album in 2000. The lead single from the set was "Crazy For This Girl" written by Jaron with Jeff Cohen, and produced by John Fields, who would go on to work with Pink and the Jonas Brothers. The power-pop song fits in the mold of pleasant adult-style music from Michael Penn and Tal Bachmann, with lyrics the follow the "quirky girl who loves me" template. It's pleasant, it's unoffensive, and it was retro but bright enough to fit on the radio at the time, and the brothers found themselves with their biggest success...

"Crazy For This Girl" became Evan and Jaron's first and only hit on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 (as a duo), reaching the top 40 in March of 2001. The song climbed to #4 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, while making it to #27 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list. Internationally, the single went to #9 in Italy and #37 in New Zealand, and just missed the top-40 in Canada at #45. The Evan and Jaron album, released in October of 2000, peaked at #156 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. 

Despite the success of the single, which included its appearance on the hit TV show Dawson's Creek, the duo's next release, "From My Head To My Heart", which already had exposure in the movie Runaway Bride, only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #124, though it reached the top-40 on both the Mainstream Top-40 (#35) and Adult Top-40 (#28) radio charts. A third try, "The Distance", got to #31 on the Mainstream Top-40 radio list, and again "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #108. Columbia let them go after that.

The twins released one more album, Half Dozen, independently in 2004, which didn't cause any ripples. Jaron went on to start his own country-ish band Jaron and the Long Road To Love, who will return him to this series in due time. As for Evan, he went to the business side of things, and unfortunately was best known after as the manager for actor Kevin Spacey. 

(6/10)

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Here's Evan and Jaron performing "Crazy For This Girl" on The Tonight Show...

and lastly, the brothers together at a gig in 2013...

Up tomorrow: Producer/rapper hooks up with an R&B star for an emergency call.