Robbed hit of the week 11/27/23 - Chevelle's "The Red"...

 

 

"The Red" - Chevelle

from the album Wonder What's Next (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #56 

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the hard rock band Chevelle, who came together in the suburbs of Chicago in the mid-1990's. After original bass player Matt Scott left near the start, brothers Pete and Sam Loeffler recuited younger sibling Joe to form the band, and were originally signed to the Christian rock label Squint, where fellow vague-religious group Sixpence None The Richer got their break. Chevelle released their debut album Point #1 in the spring of 1999. The title track "Point #1" scraped the bottom of Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock radio chart at #40 for a week, but the album didn't get much traction since the label was on the verge of shutting down. But with some traction in the religious rock world (they won three "Dove Awards" with the set), the band found a home on Epic Records. 

Chevelle's first studio album on Epic would be Wonder What's Next, which came out in the fall of 2002. The lead single from the set was "The Red", written by the band and produced by Garth Richardson. The lyrics are bare-boned and are themed around rage and the "seeing red" trope associated with it. The emotion is described more as a wave of something uncontrollable than a reaction to something. The production though is a bit restrained for this subject matter, and lead singer Pete's vocals are have more precision than untamed emotion. With the guitar crunch way high up in the mix, it's sonic impact is there, though it may be construed as lighter than the anger in say Linkin Park's Chester Bennington. The music video places the band at an anger management seminar....

While "The Red" spent two weeks at #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock airplay chart, and peaked at #4 on their Alternative Rock counterpart, the song stalled under the halfway mark on the Hot 100 in January of 2003. The Wonder What's Next album, released in October of 2002, came in at #14 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending a hefty 49 weeks on the list and going on to sell over two million copies.

The second single from the record, "Send The Pain Below", topped both the Mainstream (four weeks) and Alternative (one week) Rock charts, but again pop radio gave it a pass, and it stopped at #65 on the Hot 100. A third release from the set, "Closure", was a moderate hit on the Mainstream (#11) and Alternative (#17) rock charts, while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #120. 

After being part of the tour with bands Disturbed, Taproot, and Unloco that spawned the live album Music As A Weapon II that hit #148 on the Billboard 200, the band returned in 2004 with their next studio album This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In), which became their first to make the top ten on that tally at #8; it sold over a million copies. The first single from the set, the ritalin-slamming "Vitamin D (Leading Us Along)", scored Chevelle a second Mainstream Rock #1 (Alternative rock #3), while landing their third and so far most recent appearance on the Hot 100 at #68. But shortly after Joe left the band (it's disputed under what circumstances). 

During the next years touring as a support act to bigger acts, Chevelle eventually brought in Dean Bernardini as the new bassist. With Dean they recorded their next record Vena Sera, which hit #12 on the Billboard 200 and shipped gold (over a half-million copies). Chevelle continued their success on rock radio, claiming their third and longest-running #1 hit (twelve weeks) in 2011 with "Face To The Floor" from the Hats Off To The Bull album, but even that only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #110. They repeated that feat with the lead singles from their next two albums, "Take Out The Gunman" from La Gargola in 2014 and "Joyride (Omen)" from The North Corridor in 2016. 

Bernardini left the group in 2019, leaving brothers Pete and Sam along with touring bass player Kemble Walters. The Loefflers released their most recent full-length studio album NIRATIAS, in 2021, with first single "Self Destructor" topping the Mainstream Rock chart for three weeks, and popping on to the Alternative list at #35. That was followed by their most recent single and Elon Musk fanboy fodder "Mars Simula" at #3. 

(6/10)

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Chevelle performed the song on the Craig Kilborn late night show to promote the album...

and lastly, live in Chicago in 2011...