Robbed hit of the week 09/09/24 - Incubus' "Megalomaniac"...

 

 

"Megalomaniac" - Incubus

from the album A Crow Left Of The Murder... (2004)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #55 

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the alternative rock band Incubus, who had cracked the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in the summer of 2001 with "Drive".  While the band was touring behind the album but before "Drive" was released, they released an EP of live material, When Incubus Attacks Vol. 1, which came in at #41 on the Billboard 200. Also, Immortal re-released Fungus Amongus, which spent a week on that list at #118. 

Incubus returned in the fall of 2001 with their next album Morning View, which definitely took a cue from the success of the softer "Drive". The first single from the record, "Wish You Were Here", again was produced with Litt, again sounded like a more pensive Sugar Ray, and that clicked with rock radio, which had the song spend six weeks at #2 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart, and #4 on the Mainstream Rock radio list, but it wasn't too hard to take seven weeks on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format with a peak of #36. On the main Hot 100, where mainstream pop stations were cooler on it, the single topped out at #60, though it became the band's first British top-40 hit at #27. The album, which spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200, also sold two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, Morning View gave Einzinger and Litt along with Dave Holdredge and Rick Will a nominated for Best Non-Classical Engineered Album, which went to the team behind Norah Jones' Come Away With Me. However after their tour behind the album, Katunich exited the band, to be replaced by Ben Kenney, who is still their bassist today.

At the time of recording their next set, A Crow Left Of The Murder..., the band was suing their label for better compensation in their contract based on their success. They also switched producers to Brendan O'Brien (who worked with grunge titans Pearl Jam and Soundgarden). The lead single from the set was the expansive art-metal piece "Megalomaniac". Written by bandmates Brandon Boyd, Mike Einzinger, Ben Kenney, Chris Kilmore, and Jose Padillas, who claim the song wasn't about a real-life person, still leaned on the cult of personality that floated lightly around George Bush and would in time would ably predict Mango Mussolini. The lyrics are sparse but the anger is there against those who believe they're on another level from the rest of us. The music video, though, goes all the way to 12 out of ten, pulling the "big guy" of fascists in a crazy dream of anger inspired by "Bulls On Parade"...

While "Megalomaniac" became a huge rock radio hit, spending six weeks at #1 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart and the same amount of weeks at #2 on the Mainstream counterpart, pop radio shied away from the abrasiveness of the track and the song stalled under the halfway mark on the Hot 100 in February of 2004. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Italy (#21), the United Kingdom (#23), New Zealand (#30), Australia (#36), and Ireland (#37). The Crow Left Of The Murder album, which came out in February as the single was cresting, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2005, "Megalomaniac" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing to Velvet Revolver's "Slither". 

The second single from the record, "Talk Shows On Mute", another rocker with deeper aspirations, spent three weeks at #3 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart, peaked at #18 on the Mainstream counterpart, and only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #116. It did hit the Top-40 in New Zealand at #24, and just missed the level in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. 

(8/10)

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Here's the band performing the song on Letterman...

and lastly, live in concert...