Hootie & the Blowfish hit #1 with Cracked Rear View: May 27, 1995

Originally posted May 27, 2012.

“Cracked Rear View marks the commercial debut of these college buddies from South Carolina.” ^AZ It became “the success story of 1994/1995,” ^AMG building from a July 1994 release to topping the Billboard charts eleven months later and selling ten million copies during 1995 alone. ^WK “It’s a startling, large number, especially for a new band, but in some ways, the success of the record isn’t that surprising.” ^AMG “Although Hootie & the Blowfish aren’t innovative, they deliver the goods, turning out an album of solid, rootsy folk-rock songs that have simple, powerful hooks.” ^AMG

Hold My Hand

“Hold My Hand has a singalong chorus that epitomizes the band’s good-times vibes.” ^AMG With their pop hooks, it’s no surprise that ‘Hold My Hand,’ Let Her Cry, and Only Wanna Be with You were all big hits. Granted, “none of the tracks transcend their generic status, but they are strong songs for their genre, with crisp chords and bright melodies.” ^AMG

Let Her Cry

Generally “bands given to blunt popcraft and elementary guitars generally favor singers up toward the whiny end of the dramatic spectrum.” ^RC However, lead singer Darius Rucker’s “gruff baritone has more grit than the actual songs.” ^AMG He “takes his vocal cues from what Gregg Allman made of blues and soul” ^RC and his “grit adds an extra layer of substance to a music already deeply comforting in its formal certainties.” ^RC

Only Wanna Be with You

In addition, with “Mark Bryan’s muscular guitar framing Jim Sonefeld’s bluesy, energetic southern folk rock tunes” ^AZ the crew made “the kind of thoroughly likable album people sing along with on the car radio. When Rucker demands, ‘Stand up and let me see you smile,’ there’s something that feels real and convincing behind it; sure, it’s a formula, but a sincere one, and it works over and over again.” ^AZ

“At their core, Hootie & the Blowfish are a bar band, but they managed to convince millions of listeners that they were the local bar band.” ^AMG “There may not be a lot of virtuosity behind it, but there's plenty of fun” ^AZ “and that’s why Cracked Rear View was a major success.” ^AMG

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Awards:

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Resources and Related Links:

• DMDB page for Cracked Rear View
• Hootie & the Blowfish’s DMDB Music Maker Encyclopedia entry
• ^AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
• ^AZ Amazon.com review by Barrie Trinkle
• ^RC RobertChristgau.com
• ^WK Wikipedia

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On This Day (1945): Les Brown hit #1 with “Sentimental Journey”

Sentimental Journey Les Brown

Writer(s): Bud Green, Les Brown, Ben Homer (see lyrics here) First Charted: March 3, 1945 Peak: 19 US, 12 GA, 14 HP, 2 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 6.42 video, -- streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Sentimental indeed. When she first saw the sheet music, Doris Day commented, “What a lovely title,” to which Les Brown responded “Wait till you hear it.” SS “The song’s aching nostalgia struck a chord in a nation welcoming its boys back from the front lines,” TM becoming “one of a handful of songs that summed up romantic longing during World War II.” SS Will Friedwald called it “the definitive end-of-war song,” SS “a song that helped define an era.” SS Doris Day’s “honey with a dash of pepper” TM voice compelled one “to pack your bag and join her on that journey home.” TM “In the lilting fox-trot…and in Arthur Green’s swinging sen-tuh-men-tul phrasing — you can almost see the locomotive wheels chugging, hear the steam spurting from the smokestack and feel the second-class coach swaying back and forth as the train makes its way down the tracks.” TM The top hit of 1945 TY launched the career of then-twenty-year-old Doris Day as a solo artist and America’s sweetheart. It would be the biggest hit of her career as well as Les Brown, the orchestra leader credited with the song. Stunningly, the record could potentially have been even bigger. According to George Simon in the December 1946 issue of Metronome, war restrictions prevented Columbia Records from pressing more copies of the song to maximize its potential. SS On top of that, Les Brown and His Band of Renown performed the song for awhile, but couldn’t record it because of the musicians’ strike of 1942 to 1944. WK Brown adopted the million-seller as his theme song TY and Ringo Starr later used it as the title cut for his 1970 debut solo album, a collection of standards. JA It became a jazz standard and was recorded by numerous artists, including Booker T. & the MG’s, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Woody Herman, Harry James, The Platters, Frank Sinatra, and Amy Winehouse. WK Resources: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Les Brown DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Doris Day DJ David Jasen (2002). A Century of American Popular Music: 2000 Best-Loved and Remembered Songs (1899-1999). Routledge: Taylor & Francis, Inc. Page 170. SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 375-6. TM Time magazine (10/24/2011). “All Time 100 Songs” TY1 Don Tyler (1985). Hit Parade 1920-1955. Quill: New York, NY. Page 125. WK Wikipedia First posted 3/3/2016; last updated 9/5/2023.

Pulp released “Common People”

Common People Pulp

Writer(s): Jarvis Cocker, Russell Senior, Steve Mackey, Nick Banks, Candida Doyle (see lyrics here) Released: May 22, 1995 First Charted: June 3, 1995 Peak: 2 UK, 65 AU, 6 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 0.6 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 62.0 video, 189.70 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: “Common People” was the lead single from Pulp’s fifth album, Different Class. It not only became the band’s signature song but a defining Britpop track. WK In 2007, NME magazine ranked it as the third greatest indie anthem ever. WK The song was ranked the greatest song of the Britpop movement by Paste magazine in 2014 and a Rolling Stone readers’ poll in 2015. WK DJ Steve Lamacq said it “seemed to embrace the essence of the time so perfectly.” WK Musically, the song was based a chord sequence singer Jarvis Cocker wrote on a second-hand Casio keyboard he bought after trading in a bunch of albums at the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill. SF Bassist Steve Mackey said it sounded like Emerson Lake & Palmer’s version of “Fanfare for the Common Man.” SF Music & Media described it as “playing with electro and indie guitar pop like Blur on ‘Girls & Boys.’” WK That title reminded Cocker of an experience from 1988 when he was enrolled in a film studies class at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. He was attracted to a Greek art student, but got turned off by her proclamation that she “wanted to move to Hackney and live like ‘the common people.’” WK The song became a critique of slumming in which people of means ascribed glamour to poverty. The song was written in June 1994. After the band performed the song live, “it became clear to me it was a significant song.” SF Pulp hadn’t finished the rest of the songs for the subsequent album, but pushed to release “Common People.” Cocker said,” the other eight songs were done while ‘Common People’ was in the Top 10.” SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Pulp SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 10/13/2021; last updated 8/24/2023.