Songoftheday 8/9/22 -Such a sexy pretty little thing, fierce nipple pierce you got me sprung with your tongue ring...
"Butterfly" - Crazy Town
from the album The Gift Of Game (1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 18
Today's song comes from the nu-metal band Crazy Town, who came together in L.A. in the mid 1990s. Led by co-singer/rappers Seth "Shifty Shellshock" Binzer and Bret "Epic" Mazur, they recruited guitarists Antonio Valli and Charles Lopez, bass player Doug Miller, DJ/turntablist Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein, and drummer James Bradley Jr, a veteran who goes back to touring with Stevie Wonder in the beginning of the 1970's. Signed to label giant Columbia Records, the band released their debut album The Gift Of Game in 1999. Two singles were promoted to rock radio, but neither "Toxic" or "Darkside" got any attention, and were a bit hard-edged for that format. Neither did the DJ promo "B-Boy 2000" with rapper KRS-One, which was a melding of techno and metal. By this time Lopez had already left the band.
Desiring a "hit" for their investment, Columbia released the much more mellow "Butterfly" as the third offering to radio and first commercial single from the record. With the lyrics from Binzer and Mazur, the song interpolated the instrumental album track "Pretty Little Ditty" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that clearly paved the way for the rap-rock genre ten years prior. For that sample the band got full writer's credit on "Butterfly". The song starts out pretty crassly, with an obvious allusion to oral skills as Binsky praises his woman, then goes on to higher aspirations, as describing how she "saved" him and his criminal life. Mazur comes in with the last verse that's just a coda to it. The lyrics are borderline puerile, and really what saves this record is the sample (praise to RHCP) and Bradley's drumming keeping things tight. Both Shifty's gym-toned shirtless body and tattoos got MTV, and subsequently scores of women to notice, and the band found themselves with their biggest moment...
"Butterfly" went all the way to #1 on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 in March of 2001. On the radio, the song topped the Alternative Rock chart for two weeks while climbing to #21 on the Mainstream Rock list. It also got to #2 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart and #6 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format list. Internationally, the single was massive as well, topping the charts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Poland, and Romania. It also made the top ten in Sweden (#2), Finland (#2), New Zealand (#2), the United Kingdom (#3), Canada (#3), Australia (#4), Belgium (#5F/#9W), Portugal (#5), the Netherlands (#8), and Ireland (#10). The Gift Of Game album, originally released in November of 1999, peaked at #9 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies.
The next single released from The Gift Of Game was another mellowed-out track, "Revolving Door". But without a good sample to distract from the crappy frat-boy lyrics, the song completely stiffed here in the States, though it landed the band a second top-40 hit in Finland (#19), The United Kingdom (#23), and Germany (#26).
With new second guitar Kraig Tyler, the band returned in 2002 with their sophomore effort Darkside. Trying to establish their alt-rock cred, and align in the side of the rap-rock genre that would sell millions for Linkin Park, Crazy Town went super-serious on their lead single "Drowning", which sports what would be considered "thoughtful" for the frat boy crowd, inventing the new emo-metal sound. However the song was only a modest hit on both Mainstream (#24) and Alternative (#24) rock radio, missing the pop Hot 100 altogether, while in the UK it stopped at #50. The Darkside album spent a solitary week on the Billboard 200 chart at #120. After a second try "Hurt You So Bad", which had Weezer's Rivers Cuomo guesting on guitar and a dance remix from Paul Oakenfold, completely tank, Columbia summarily dumped the group, and Crazy Town split a year later.
In 2002, as the band was at its end, Binzer found another outlet to success with DJ/remixer Paul Oakenfold (who'd mixed the last single) for the track "Starry Eyed Surprise", which went to #6 in the UK and missed the American pop top-40 by one notch. The song also appeared on Binzer's first solo album as Shifty Shellshock, Happy Love Sick, along with second single "Slide Along Side", which hit #38 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart but missed the Hot 100, while making the top-40 in the UK at #29 and Italy at #11.
Meanwhile the 2000s was hard on the rest of the members, with both Lopez and Goldstein dying too early, and Binzer going on the VH1 reality show trainwreck Celebrity Rehab and Sober House twice each. In 2010 Binzer and Mazur reunited, reforming Crazy Town with a completely new lineup. In 2015 they released a third (and most recent) album, The Brimstone Sluggers, on the indie Membran label. This year, Binzer alone (as "Crazy Town X") released a single with Ray Garrison, "Leeches".
(5/10)
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Here's the band playing (seemingly live vocal to track) for a TV appearance...
And again on a live gig in Canada in 2001...
Up tomorrow: Two beneficiaries of the Latin Explosion are extroverts.
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