Songoftheday 8/25/22 -Desperate for changing starving for truth, I'm closer to where I started I'm chasing after you...
"Hanging By A Moment" - Lifehouse
from the album No Name Face (2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 45
Today's song comes from the rock band Lifehouse, who originally came together in Los Angeles until the name Blyss, with lead singer/guitarist Jason Wade, bass player Sergio Andrade, and drummer Diff Palmer. Adding lead guitarist Collin Hayden and keyboard player Aaron Lord, the post-grunge group independently released an album called Diff's Lucky Day in 1995. After signing with DreamWorks Records, they took five of the songs from that album for their major-label debut, No Name Face. One that wasn't taken from that disc was the first single, "Hanging By A Moment". Written by Wade and produced by Ron Aniello, the lyrics are pretty vague, with a whisp of loving someone so much that you're leaving your old life behind. There's toss-off verses like "Forgetting all I'm lacking, completely incomplete" and "I'm closer to where I started, I'm chasing after you" that make little sense to me. But it's more the angst and the music that propels this song, and it rang a bell with quite a lot of people,so much so that it became the biggest hit on Billboard magazine's year-end Hot 100 recap for 2001 without reaching #1 (the second year in a row, and only third time it happened up to that point). But oddly enough, by the time this song hit, Palmer, Lord, and Hayden had already exited the band. The music video almost exclusively locks in on Wade on this presumably concert band take...
"Hanging By A Moment" spent over a year on Billboard's Hot 100, with a month in the runner-up spot starting in June of 2001. The song topped the trade magazine's Alternative Rock (for three weeks) and older-skewing Adult Top-40 (for five weeks) radio charts, as well as peaking at #7 on the Mainstream Rock, #2 on the Mainstream Top-40, and #5 on the Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple A") rock format. Internationally, the single topped the Australian chart for five weeks, and reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#6), the United Kingdom (#25), and the Netherlands (#31). The No Name Face album, released in October of 2000, rose to #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over two million copies.
While "Hanging" was cresting on pop radio, the band promoted the emo-grunge ballad "Sick Cycle Carousel" to rock radio, where it reached both the Mainstream (#38) and Alternative (#21) format charts. By the time their debut finally exited the charts, the third single "Breathing" wasn't able to pick up on the momentum, only "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #115, although it was a decent hit at Adult Top-40 radio, making it to #19. Lifehouse will eventually return to the series.
(5/10)
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Next up, from a televised concert from 2007...
The band performed at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands in 2011...
and lastly, an acoustic live take from 2009...
Up tomorrow: This superstar sibling gives her everything.
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