Songoftheday 1/4/23 - He spends his nights in California watching the stars on the big screen, then he lies awake and he wonders "why can't that be me?"...

 

 

"Be Like That" - 3 Doors Down

from the album The Better Life (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #24 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 12

 

Today's song comes from the rock band 3 Doors Down, who had huge success their first time out when their major-label debut single, "Kryptonite", topped Billboard magazine's rock radio chart for weeks and reached #3 on the "pop" Hot 100 in the fall of 2000. Their follow-up, "Loser" (not to be confused with the Beck classic), was an even bigger hit on rock radio, spending twenty-one weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart (with over a year on the list) and a week at #2 on the Alternative Rock radio counterpart. However the grungy track didn't catch with pop radio, and the song stalled at #55 on the Hot 100 (it did manage to make #36 on the Adult Top-40 radio list). The third offering was the propulsive and guitar-heavy "Duck And Run", which scored a hat trick by topping the Mainstream Rock chart for three weeks, just missing the Alternative Rock side top ten at #11, but the single failed to make the Hot 100, "bubbling under" the tally at #110.

In the spring of 2001, the band released a fourth and final single from the debut album, the ballad "Be Like That". Written by the band's lead singer Brad Arnold and guitarists Matt Roberts and Chris Henderson, the lyrics allude to following your dreams to fame and fortune through a man and woman in what is presumed to be the underclass. The result is a record that has the cadence of a Creed anthem without Scott Stapp's histrionics, and Arnold's low-key approach helps the rather basic theme get across better. The more melodic (though rocking at times) single brought them back to pop radio and kept them from being a "one hit wonder" on the format and setting the momentum for their next album...

"Be Like That" became 3 Doors Down's second top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in November of 2001, a full year after "Kryptonite". On the radio, the song peaked at #14 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, got to #5 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, and was a moderate success on rock radio, reaching both the Mainstream (#10) and Alternative (#22) lists. The band will return to the series.

(6/10)

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The song was reworked in the summer of 2001 for inclusion in the franchise comedy film American Pie 2, which helped hype the single to a mass audience. A second music video was filmed with that version that included clips from the movie...

Next up, the band live in 2002 at Mardi Gras in Texas...

and finally, from their concert DVD Away from the Sun: Live from Houston, Texas from 2005...

Up tomorrow: Redneck rapper spells out how unattractive you are.