Traditional Album Overview: Hootie & the Blowfish Smashed Grunge with Cracked Rear View

Wren Graves seems again 25 years later at how roots rock band Hootie & the Blowfish conquered grunge and various rock with their album Cracked Rear View to grow to be one of many best-selling artists of the last decade.

Let’s speak about backlashes, deserved and undeserved. On the subject of issues we actually like, people might be surprisingly unmotivated. However on the subject of the issues we hate — once we’re aggravated, bothered, or mildly inconvenienced — cowards grow to be lionhearts, idiots grow to be Einsteins, and good folks flip into comment-section psychopaths.

Earlier than the Web, when the music business had much more clout, the large labels typically created these backlashes unintentionally. Followers relied on radio to find new music, and airplay was guarded by middlemen. The gatekeepers favored to seek out one thing worthwhile and double-down, to take no dangers and jam the worthwhile factor down our throats.

In 1991, Nirvana and Metallica rode a backlash in opposition to glam metallic to shock No. 1 albums. By 1993, onerous rock dominated the charts, and lots of labels forgot there have been other forms of music. However change was coming. And its identify, inexplicably, was Hootie & the Blowfish.

Hootie & the Blowfish have been based on the College of South Carolina in 1986. Guitarist Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing within the bathe. With bassist Dean Felber and (after a false begin) drummer Jim Sonefeld, the band performed covers in rowdy Carolina bars. They self-released two EPs in addition to an album with an terrible identify, Kootchypop.

By 1993, Hootie had established a neighborhood following. They performed to Jager-swilling faculty bars on what is typically referred to as the SEC circuit. The songs have been slick Southern rock, twinged with folks and nation. However for eight years, there was nearly no curiosity from the large labels. Lastly, in 1994, Tim Sommers and Atlantic Data signed them for $75,000 complete — that’s $75,000 to document the album, and something left over the band stored as an advance. In keeping with Sommers, the usual deal on the time was $250,000 all-in. Hootie & the Blowfish have been valued at far much less. Atlantic wouldn’t even pay for a music video.

The recording of Cracked Rear View took solely three weeks. It was straightforward for the band; they’d been enjoying a few of the songs for eight years.

And now we get to the enjoyable half: Slowly, one single at a time, a band that no person believed in went 20x platinum. Immediately, Cracked Rear View is the 19th best-selling document within the nation.

This baffled a lot of folks, and it may possibly partly be understood as a backlash in opposition to an excessive amount of grunge. The week that Tim Sommers signed Hootie & the Blowfish, he stated, “Within the US High 10 Albums, there was a pile of grunge data and Bob Seger’s Best Hits.” It was Bob Seger that caught his consideration. Individuals who weren’t keen on grunge have been shopping for outdated songs from the ’60s and ’70s. “This indicated to me that there was a significant a part of not being served by the document corporations, who have been signing grunge and solely grunge.”

After Nirvana and Metallica threw gasoline on the rock fires, Hootie & the Blowfish have been prepared to chill issues down.

“Maintain My Hand” was the primary single and, consequently, the band’s first prime 10 hit. The guitars are muscular, the tone is vibrant, and the lyrics are as deep as a bumper sticker. “’Trigger I’ve acquired a hand for you/ ‘Trigger I wanna run with you!” The melody is easy, with a hook that’ll flip any reside present right into a sing-along.

Musically, Hootie & the Blowfish have an nearly philosophical dedication to conserving the nice instances rolling. Nonetheless, this isn’t true of the lyrics, which are sometimes rooted in remorse and loss. On songs like “Look Away”, “Goodbye”, and “Hannah Jane”, the stress is in romance gone dangerous. However the music all the time guarantees that issues will prove all proper. “Hannah Jane” is a rollicking good time. Rucker sings, “One step and tomorrow comes/ Two steps and she or he’s off with somebody,” which is darker to learn than to listen to; the way in which Ruckus shouts, “One step” and “Two steps” makes it sound like instructions for a dance.

The darkest lyrics are on “Drowning”, particularly when Rucker remembers being informed, “Return to Africa!” He wails, “I”m a person! I’m a person!” in probably the most highly effective vocal efficiency on the album. However even then the music is relentlessly upbeat. Mark Bryan unleashes his interior guitar hero with a lick that seems like heartland Eric Clapton. This retains “Drowning” afloat; when Rucker sings, “Hating all people else ‘trigger they don’t seem like you!” it’s not miserable or indignant. It looks like an anthem, a name to motion.

Cracked Rear View has a good runtime of 43 minutes. There isn’t an actual miss on the album, besides maybe the hidden monitor, an underwhelming cowl of “Motherless Youngster”. The most effective lower — maybe the perfect Hootie & the Blowfish track of their 15-year discography — is “Let Her Cry”. The storytelling is great, with every verse sketching somewhat scene. Name it standard. Name it melodramatic. Name it no matter names you want, however I dare you to take heed to that hovering refrain and never sing alongside.

Hootie & the Blowfish have been just about extraordinary in 1993, rising stars in 1994, and the best-selling act of 1995. That meteoric rise elicited a predictable backlash. A few of this got here from coastal critics who most popular the rawer aesthetics of grunge. Hootie are a industrial rock act, and industrial artwork is rarely cool. Some criticisms directed on the band are extra a matter of style. Hootie routinely makes lists of worst band names. Maybe you don’t suppose Hootie & the Blowfish is actually horrible, however keep in mind, additionally they referred to as an album Kootchypop; they don’t get the good thing about the doubt on this division.

Years in the past, VH1 used to run a section making enjoyable of Hootie & the Blowfish, particularly “Solely Wanna Be with You”. The fourth monitor on Cracked Rear View, “Solely Wanna Be with You” was the life-changing single, the track that launched them into one other stratosphere. Immediately, it stays their signature track and a staple in Darius Rucker’s solo reveals. It’s additionally straightforward to mock. As a vocalist, Rucker sounds nice belting at full voice. However on “Solely Wanna Be with You”, he inflects that “You” with a playful warble. The lyrics are goofy, most famously “I’m such a child, yeah, the Dolphins make me cry.” However with a melody this completely infectious, these quirks are straightforward to forgive.

As Nirvana and Metallica ready listeners for the subsequent wave of heaviness, Hootie paved the way in which for clean industrial rock. Matchbox Twenty, Creed, Third Eye Blind, and extra have been signed within the wake of Hootie’s success. Additionally they have been a part of an unlucky precedent, the place it was cool to hate the preferred radio rockers. Hootie was uncool for so long as folks cared about such issues, earlier than passing the torch to Nickelback. Hopefully, that exact backlash is lifeless now, together with the outdated music business gatekeepers.

The band plowed on for a couple of extra albums with diminishing industrial outcomes. Across the time rock was shifting in direction of The Strokes and The White Stripes, Hootie disbanded, and Darius Rucker launched a solo profession in nation radio. Listening to cuts like “Let Her Cry” and “Working from an Angel”, this looks like a pure development, although some mocked him on the time. As a rustic artist, Rucker scored 4 No. 1 hits.

There are a selection of classes to be gleaned from the surprising blockbuster Cracked Rear View. How does this form of factor occur? Effectively, it helps to be fortunate and good. Hootie & the Blowfish benefited from a skewed rock panorama, the place copycat document labels inundated music followers with comparable sounds and oversaturated the market with one explicit factor — one thing they provided a substitute for. However whereas the timing certainly gave them a lift, they might have discovered some success finally. Throughout a number of radio codecs, Darius Rucker has proved to be a hitmaker.

Hootie additionally proved, when you had any doubts, that the outdated gatekeepers have been largely incompetent and deserved to die off. Immediately, the construction of the business is lots tougher on the artists, however infinitely higher for followers. And at last, in music, similar to in center college, they taught us that we shouldn’t be so obsessed about what’s cool and what’s not. In 1995, a lot of music followers would have referred to as Morrissey nice and Darius Rucker lame. Immediately, Morrissey is an unrepentant racist whereas Darius Rucker performs a number of charity reveals a yr and has raised tens of tens of millions of for faculties and hospitals in South Carolina. Till 2015, a Accomplice flag flew on the South Carolina Capitol constructing. In keeping with Tim Sommers, Hootie & the Blowfish have been politically agitating to have it eliminated even earlier than they signed to Atlantic. In different phrases, they appear like genuinely good folks whose solely crime was utilizing good-time music to briefly grow to be the largest band on this planet.

Cracked Rear View isn’t a masterpiece within the conventional sense, but it surely’s a basic of its time and place. It’s straightforward to see that now, 25 years later. And you recognize what? I’ve modified my thoughts. I even just like the identify Hootie & the Blowfish.

However anyone needs to be in jail for Kootchypop.

Important Tracks: “Let Her Cry”, “Solely Wanna Be with You”, and “Drowning”