Songoftheday 1/11/23 - She was sitting at the table he could see she was unable, so she ran into the bedroom she was struck down it was her doom...

 

 

"Smooth Criminal" - Alien Ant Farm

from the album ANThology (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 9

 

Today's song comes from the rock band Alien Ant Farm, who came together in inland California in the mid-1990's. Singer Dryden Mitchell, guitarist Terry Corso, bass player Tye Zamora, and drummer Mike Cosgrove started to release music on their own, and after putting out two EP's (extended play singles) of material, the group released their first album, the comically titled Greatest Hits, in 1999. They got some good local buzz on that indie set, and were signed to Dreamworks Records under the New Noize imprint. There the band recorded their first major-label set, the equally ambitiously-titled ANThology. The lead single from the set was "Movies", written by the act and produced by Jay Baumgardner. The buzz guitar-heavy track sported a fun video about, of course, the movie house, and was a moderate hit in the spring of 2001 on Alternative Rock radio, where it peaked at #18 on the genre radio chart in Billboard magazine. That was a nice start, but it would be the follow-up that would bring Alien Ant Farm their biggest success.

The band had covered Michael Jackson's top ten pop hit from 1989 "Smooth Criminal" as a hidden bonus for their indie Greatest Hits, and re-recorded it for the major label album. Also produced by Baumgardner, the converted the song into a pop-punk burst of energy that's at once identifiable but different enough to catch a new generation's ear, even as Jackson himself was still active (yet to a lesser degree), hitting the pop top ten at about the same time with "You Rock My World". The two acts were defnitely catering to different audiences, and the younger brats were able to nod their head to the guitar crunch and the elevated tempo. Couple that with the seemingly low-end party vibe of the music video, where they bring out tropes from  many of Michael's videos and life, like the lighted sidewalk from "Billie Jean", the car crotch grab from "The Way You Make Me Feel", the lean from Jackson's "Smooth Criminal", and a chimp (harkening the "Bubbles" thing), and MTV got on board and gave the band their first and only pop hit...

Alien Ant Farm's take on "Smooth Criminal" became their sole placing on Billboard's Hot 100, reaching the top 40 in November of 2001. On the radio, the song made it to #12 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, while spending a month (four weeks) at #1 on their Alternative Rock list, and also getting to #18 on the Mainstream Rock counterpart. Internationally, the single topped the Australian chart for eight weeks, and reached the top ten in Ireland (#2), Finland (#2), the United Kingdom (#3), Belgium (#3 Flanders/#4 Wallonia), Denmark (#3), the Netherlands (#4), Switzerland (#4), New Zealand (#4), Germany (#5), Sweden (#5), Austria (#6), and Norway (#7). The ANThology album, released in March of that year, crested at #11 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies.

After the success of "Smooth Criminal", the Farm re-released "Movies", where in America it went to #38 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. It was much more successful overseas, scoring a second top ten hit in the UK at #5. However a third single from the album, the more serious (and musically superior) "Attitude", stopped down at #66 in the UK, and didn't get much notice here in the States. Perhaps the stopped promotion due to the band's being in a horrible tour bus accident while in Europe aided in that.

Alien Ant Farm returned in 2003 with their next album TruANT, which had a high-quality team behind it in producers Dean and Robert DeLeo from Stone Temple Pilots, as well as engineer/mixer Brendon O'Brien, who worked with Pearl Jam. The first single from the set, "These Days", was another song they re-did from their indie Greatest Hits debut album. They did a "stunt video" for the song, filming on a rooftop opposite the BET Music Awards, with reactions of a whole bunch of R&B artists before they were arrested, which is daring but just a little cringy. (They also filmed a separate video of them crashing a Justin Timberlake concert and a gay pride parade.) As for the single, the hype didn't pay off too much - the song went to #29 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart, #38 on the Mainstream Rock list, and pop stations left it be. Another track from the record, "Glow", was an unexpected hit Down Under, reaching #5 in New Zealand and #98 in Australia. The TruANT album stopped below the Billboard 200 top-40 at #42. By the end of the year, Corso left the band, and Dreamworks was ingested in the Universal merger frenzy, with the band reassigned to Geffen Records. 

It would be a tumultuous three years, including an shelved album called 3RD Draft, before the band released Up In The Attic with new guitarist Joe Hill, using all the songs from that aborted set plus one more. The record spent a week at #114 on the Billboard 200, and Zamora also left shortly after its release. The band briefly called it quits, and Geffen released a (true) Greatest Hits set in 2008. A year later, with Zamora and Corso reuniting with Mitchell and Cosgrove, they recorded a concert set Live From Germany to fulfill their Geffen contract. 

Tye Zamora left the group again in 2014, replaced by Tim Peugh, and since then they released one more album in 2015, Always and Forever independently. Most recently, Alien Ant Farm released a new song in 2020, a cover of Wham's 80's hit "Everything She Wants". 

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Here's Alien Ant Farm performing on The Tonight Show....

and lastly, in concert in the Netherlands in 2002...

Up tomorrow: A blonde country singer shows you his roots.