Songoftheday 6/5/24 - Circling you're circling you're circling your head, contemplating everything you ever said...

 

 

"Headstrong" - Trapt

from the album Trapt (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 17

 

Today's song comes from the band Trapt, who came together in the suburbs of the Bay Area in the late 1990s. Touring right out of high school, the group sold copies of their self-released album Amalgamation, in 1999, before being signed by Warner Brothers Records. With lead singer Chris Taylor Brown, guitarist Simon Ormandy, and bass player Pete Charrell along with new drummer Monty Montgomery, Trapt released their eponymous first album on the label in the late fall of 2002. It was preceded earlier in the season with the lead single "Headstrong". Written by Brown, Ormandy, and Charrell with Jeffrey Unbankes, the lyrics are a swirling stew of angst sprinkled with a helping of mind control paranoia. Painting broad strokes of commercialism, their only defense of repeating "headstrong" ad nauseum, like those people who think broadcasting that they're an "independent voter" is a personality. The production by Garth Richardson, aka "GGGarth", who got his big break respectably by helming the debut album from Rage Against The Machine, is a distillation of both pop-punk and nu-metal without the fun of the former or the edge of the latter. The music video is an orgy of young male anger, which apparently involved swirling newspaper debris, with a token female to "prove" they're not all incels...

Nevertheless, "Headstrong" did capture the moment for enough fans to turn its rock radio success into a mainstream phenomenon, reaching the top-20 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in November of 2003, a full year after its release, spending an impressive 43 weeks on the chart. On the radio, the song topped both the Mainstream (one week) and Alternative (five weeks) Rock charts, peaked at #4 on the Mainstream top-40 list, and even popped on to the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format for a week at #40. The Trapt album, released in November of 2002, only made it to #42 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, but spent 82 weeks on the list, going on to sell over a million copies.

The second single from the record, "Still Frame", went for a darker but more melodious vibe. It scored another #1 on the Alternative Rock chart, and took a week at #3 on the Mainstream Rock counterpart, but stalled at #69 on the Hot 100, their last appearance there. That was followed by "Echo", their attempt to soften up for the mainstream market to capitalize on their more photogenic version of nu-metal. The song hit #10 on the Alternative Rock chart, and #13 on the Mainstream Rock list, and even made the Mainstream Top-40 radio chart at #27, but only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #125.

Trapt returned in 2005 with their sophomore effort on Warners, Someone In Control, which landed at #14 on the Billboard 200 (though compared with their prior set only spent nine weeks on the list). The first single "Stand Up" saw the change in rock radio dynamics, with the song doing better on the Mainstream side spending two weeks at #3, while stopping at #17 on the Alternative Rock list. 

Switching sides to the indie Eleven Seven label and with Ormandy amicably leaving the band to be replaced by Robb Torres, Trapt released Only Through The Pain in 2008, which also came in in the top-20 on the Billboard 200 (though only lasting seven weeks this time out). Lead single "Who's Going Home With You Tonight?" tried to fit in with the "hard bands doing love song fodder", and took it to #12 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #31 on the Alternative counterpart. A second disc for Eleven Seven, No Apologies, came in at #25 on the Billboard 200, and saw it's track "Sound Off" go to #6 on the Mainstream Rock list.

 

With another label switch to FoF/Epochal distributed through major EMI Records, and another drummer change to Dylan Howard, Trapt put out Reborn in 2013, which came in at #44 on the Billboard 200, and scored another pair of moderate rock radio hits. 

 

By the time of their seventh studio set DNA, which came out in 2016, they started their own Crash Collide imprint, and yet again had a new guitarist (Ty Fury) and drummer (Brendan Haigle). But just in time for the start of the American cult era, Brown was more interested in spreading hate and health misinformation via social media, getting in petty squabbles and trying to be the poster boy for the alt-right. While it sputtered out a pair of top-40 hits on Mainstream Rock radio, "It's Over" which hit #33 would be their so-far last singles chart appearance, as was the album at #148 on the Billboard 200. 

Since then, they have released two more studio albums, most recently The Fall last week. Brown has continued his homophobic, antisemitic, and anti-science ranting on whatever media platform doesn't ban him an any particular time. What a waste.

(4/10)

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Here's the band performing live in concert..

Up tomorrow: Country troubadour sings about the really younger generation.