Songoftheday 11/1/22 - You cannot quit me so quickly, there's no hope in you for me...

 

 

"The Space Between" - Dave Matthews Band

from the album Everyday (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from the Dave Matthews Band, whose second full-length studio album Crash in 1996 included two songs that became decent radio hits on pop stations, enough so to place in the top-40 of Billboard magazine's Hot 100 Airplay chart. However, since "Too Much" and "Crash Into Me" weren't released as commercially available "singles", neither was able to make the actual Hot 100 chart due to rules that the trade bible had in place since the beginning of the rock era.  The same held true for their next album, Before These Crowded Streets, which became the group's first #1 record on the Billboard 200 sales tally, though the two big hits from the set, "Don't Drink The Water" and "Stay (Wasting Time)", also were hindered by the same rule, although both peaked under the pop radio top-40 lists during 1998. But by the end of that year, due to the massive hits that missed the "big" chart due to the policy, Billboard relented and changed the rule to allow airplay-only "album track singles" to place on the Hot 100. The third single from the record, the jazz-rock jam of "Crush", then claimed their "official" first minor hit on the chart at #75. The following year, Matthews released two live albums, an acoustic duo album with Tim Reynolds Live At Luther College, and Listener Supported with the band. The former spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200, and the latter hit #15 there, both selling a couple million copies each. In 2000, Dave appeared on Santana's comeback album Supernatural on the track "Love Of My Life", which went to #39 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, losing out to Santana's big hit with Rob Thomas "Smooth". 

The Dave Matthews Band came back to the studio at the close of 2000 for their fourth effort Everyday, which came out in the beginning of the following year. The lead single promoted to radio, "I Did It", topped the climbed to #5 on Billboard's Alternative Rock Airplay chart, and #23 on their Mainstream Rock counterpart, while rising to #20 on the Adult Top-40 format and topping the new Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple A") rock radio list. The album cut was now able to place on the Hot 100, where it peaked at #75. The brash new sound was courtesy of new producer Glen Ballard, who helmed Alanis Morissette's angsty breakthrough albums, and perhaps it was too left-field for pop radio.

The second try, though, didn't have that obstacle. "The Space Between", written by Matthews and Ballard, is a ballad about a troubled love relationship, where analogies of fighting and oscillating feelings are pessimistic on the future. The title refers to the mundane time between the highs and the lows that like the universe show the biggest part is the ordinary nothingness. Ballard provides a succinct and dramatic-enough production to the track, and in return pop radio finally rewarded them. The music video tries to tell a visual story, and features actress Jaime Pressly as the troubled woman in a polluted utopia...

Because of the rule change in Billboard magazine, "The Space Between" became the band's first "official" top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in August of 2001. On the radio, the song climbed to #18 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, and #4 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. At the rock stations, the track hit #10 on the Alternative list and spent a week at #1 on the Triple-A format. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in the United Kingdom at #35. The Everyday album, released in February of that year, took two weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200, their only record to do so, going on to sell over three million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2002, "The Space Between" was nominated for Best Rock Duo/Group Vocal Performance, which went to U2 for their song "Elevation". 

 

A third song from the album promoted to radio, the title track "Everyday", just missed the big chart,  "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #101. On the radio, the song made the top-10 on the Adult Top-40 format at #8, while slipping on to the Alternative Rock list for a month with a high of #38, but its biggest success was on "Triple-A" stations, where it reigned at #1 for two months (eight weeks). Matthews and the band will be back to the series.

 

(8/10)

 

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Here's the band doing a television appearance to promote the single...

 

 Next up, on tour behind the Everyday album in 2002 in Colorado...

 

Lastly, Matthews and frequent collaborator Tim Reynolds did an acoustic take on the song at Farm Aid 30 in 2016...

Up tomorrow: A colorful newcomer dismisses a cheater with an exclamation.