One of any number of good musical trends that came out of the grunge movement of the nineties was that many pop bands had singles released that weren't your usual Top 40 fare, and this week's featured tune is a fine example. While no one will ever conflate it with "Lithium" or "Jeremy," it's not another love song, or another dance song, or any of the often mindless drivel that hits the top of the pops (though God knows I've loved my share of mindless drivel singles). And if you're going to be a One Hit Wonder, might as well at least make it interesting....
Dog's Eye View formed in 1994 in Los Angeles after lead singer Peter Stuart was discovered by Adam Duritz of Counting Crows fame. The band released its debut album a year later, and a second LP two years after that. They took a hiatus so Stuart could pursue a solo career but reunited in 2005 for a third LP. And since then, see ya! So the band has three albums and five singles for its career, which to an amateur musician such as myself sounds...wondrous.
"Everything Falls Apart" was the first single from their debut album, Happy Nowhere, released in 1995. The single peaked at #66 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album reached #77 on the Billboard 200. In Canada, however, the single hit #5--there's so many cool kids in the Great White North!
Fun Fact: Peter Stuart says he wrote this week's featured song in fifteen minutes while hungover aboard an airplane. Probably helps explain the song's sunny disposition....
Every now and again a song comes along that really doesn't mirror your life or your outlook (i.e., I'm far from perfect but I don't think most folks would consider me a fuck up, and while I can be as pessimistic as the next person, I don't hope for the worst) but is so well done that it doesn't much matter (seems that somewhere in my education I was taught that art transcends our personal peccadilloes). While "Everything Falls Apart" will never make my top 100, it's still a great little single with clever lyrics, a catchy chorus, and some nice guitar and drum work all around. Still, it's Stuart's impassioned performance that makes the song--regular readers (both of you) know of my predilection for blue-eyed soul and Stuart is one fine practitioner, bounding seamlessly between comedy and despair as he weaves his tale. As I've noted a time of two here, every now and again it all comes together for a group of musicians, and they find themselves with a sweet, sweet piece of pop pie--just like Dog's Eye View did with this one.
Lyric Sheet: "I met God this afternoon/Riding on an uptown train/I said, "Don't you have better things to do?"/He said, "If I do my job, what would you complain about?"...
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
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