Robbed hit of the week 5/8/23 - Staind's "For You"...

 

 

"For You" - Staind

from the album Break The Cycle (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #63 

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the rock band Staind, whose breakout single "It's Been Awhile" topped the rock radio charts for months while getting to the top five on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart in the fall of 2001. With the success of the ballad, Staind and Flip Records attempted to bring out the electric studio version of "Outside" as the follow-up single. The song was originally recorded as a live duet with lead singer Aaron Lewis and Fred Durst, the frontman for Limp Bizkit, and made it to #56 on the Hot 100, #31 on Billboard's older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, while spending two weeks atop the Mainstream Rock chart and six weeks at #2 on the Alternative Rock counterpart. While this new studio take had some success on radio, reaching #11 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart and #16 on the Alternative side, the track was overshadowed by the lingering previous single on pop radio, and only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #111. "Fade" was released as the third single, and the harder-edged (but still) ballad had a better reception, taking five weeks at #3 on Mainstream Rock radio, and a notch lower (#4) at Alternative stations, while returning the band to the Hot 100 at #62.  

 

For the fourth release from the set, the ballad "For You" came out at the close of 2001 to rock radio. Written by Lewis with bandmates Mike Mushok, Johnny April, and Jon Wysocki, the title of the song is quite deceiving, as it has Aaron lash out to (presumably) his parents, for their lack of empathy and/or derision towards him. It's a laser into the disgruntled teen's life, and of course it clicked, continuing the success of the album on rock radio...

 

 While "For You" got to #3 on both the Mainstream (four weeks) and Alternative (one week) Rock radio chart, the song didn't get any traction at pop radio and with no commercial sales points it stalled in the lower half of the Hot 100 in May of 2002, though it spent the maximum 20 weeks on the list. Internationally, the single was a minor British hit at #55.

A fifth single from Break The Cycle, "Epiphany", was picked up by rock radio, making it to #22 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #28 on the Alternative counterpart. 

 

(5/10)

 

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Here's the band performing the song live in concert in Germany in 2001...