Songoftheday 11/8/23 - There's another world inside of me that you may never see, there's secrets in this life that I can't hide...

 

 

"When I'm Gone" - 3 Doors Down

from the album Away From The Sun (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak :# 4 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 37

 

Today's song come from the rock band 3 Doors Down, who landed a top ten crossover pop hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the late autumn of 2000 with their debut single "Kryptonite", and also placed in the top-40 a year later with the fourth single from the record, "Be Like That". After another year with drummer Richard Lilles leaving, the group returned with their sophomore effort Away From The Sun. The lead single from the set was the hard rock ballad "When You're Gone". The song was written by the band's lead singer Brad Arnold, guitarists Matt Roberts and Chris Henderson, and bass player Todd Harrell (Josh Freese, who is now playing with Foo Fighters, was the drummer on the record). The lyrics are the vague aspirational fodder that Creed was making bank with, as their stated intention was to be about loving someone who's absent at the time. But with lines like "But when your education x-ray cannot see under my skin" there's a cloaked bitterness under that. The production from Rick Parashar uses his experience with Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, and Nickelback to paint a minor-key emo-grunge palette that's accessible enough for pop radio. With a gloom and doom music video that's more goth than the song is, the band found themselves with another huge hit...

 

"When I'm Gone" became 3 Doors Down's second top ten hit on the Hot 100 in April of 2003. On the radio, the song topped the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart for a week, and spent six weeks at #3 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. But its biggest success was on rock radio, taking seventeen weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart and two weeks at #2 on the Alternative Rock counterpart list. Internationally, the song made the top ten in Canada (#6 Sales/#10 Airplay). The Away From The Sun album, released in November of 2002, peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending 97 weeks (their most) on the list and going on to sell over four million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, "When I'm Gone" was nominated for Best Duo/Group Rock Performance (when there were seven nominees), losing to Coldplay's "In My Place".

(6/10)

3 Doors Down and the album will be back to the series.

Trying to capitalize on the patriotic/jingoistic streak going around post 9/11, a second video was filmed with the band performing on a Navy ship...

 

The group appeared on The Tonight Show to promote the album...

and lastly, in concert in Houston in 2005...

Up tomorrow: This New York rapper is hard to miss.