Songoftheday 4/18/24 -Well I saw fireworks from the freeway, and behind closed eyes, I cannot make them go away...
"The Remedy (I Won't Worry)" - Jason Mraz
from the album Waiting For My Rocket To Come (2002)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14
Today's song comes from Jason Mraz, who grew up in Virginia getting involved in musical theatre. But it was after a move to New York to pursue that when he left it to become a pop singer/songwriter. Jason eventually found himself in California, where he released a series of albums on his own before getting signed by Elektra Records. After opening for Jewel on her pop-leaning tour, Jason released his debut album Waiting For My Rocket To Come. The first single from the record to gain traction was "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)", written by Mraz with the Matrix team of Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards, and Scott Spock. The Matrix were also instrumental in the "musical makeover" of pop-punk it-girl Avril Lavigne. Jason has said that the song was inspired by a close friend who had battled cancer, and this is mostly concentrated in the first verse, where he scats about how "Who says that you deserve this? And what kind of god would serve this? We will cure this dirty old disease..." After the chorus he moves on to more worldly woes. The whole matter is a witty repartee of words that skirt subject matters, almost like a surface impression of a Rachel Maddow broadcast. But it's at least an attempt at smartness, and the production from John Alagia sounds like Matchbox Twenty doing a remake of Joan Osbourne's "One Of Us", but somehow it works. Jason's laidback delivery of the pseudo rap-singing is far from horrid and puts the message into a lite-funk groove that make you tap your pencil at work. And in the starting era of EVERYTHING BIG on pop radio, it's a nice change (and since Gregg Alexander's New Radicals were no more, we have to take what we can get). The music video mixes concert footage with a roaming walk from Jason that pulls on the comic strings...
"The Remedy" made it to the top-20 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in September of 2003. On the radio, the song peaked at #7 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart and #4 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list, but on the nascent Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") Rock format (or "rock for hipsters"), it spent two weeks at #1. Internationally, the song made the top-40 in New Zealand at #32, and was a minor hit in the United Kingdom at #79. The Waiting For My Rocket To Come album, released almost a year prior in October of 2002, got to #55 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, but stayed on the chart for over a year (56 weeks), going on to sell over a million copies.
After this success, Jason re-released "You And I Both", which was a carryover from his indie days and intended to be the lead single but stiffed initially. This time around the song topped the Triple-A Rock chart for a week, rose to #15 on the Adult Top-40 format, and popped on to the Mainstream top-40 list at #37, but only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #110. The third and final single from the debut record, "Curbside Prophet", which name-checks the album title, placed at #23 on the Adult Top-40 chart and #10 on the Triple-A Rock radio list.
Jason will be back to the series.
(8/10)
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next up, in concert in New York City...
and lastly, live at Daryl Hall's house webisode...
Up tomorrow: This singer is stunned by sexiness.
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