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Linkin Park pose with the GRAMMY for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 44th Annual GRAMMY Awards
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What It Meant To Me Will Eventually Be A Memory: Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Turns 20

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Two decades after its release, GRAMMY.com looks back on the nu-metal champions' debut album
Jeff Yerger
GRAMMYs
Oct 24, 2020 - 9:48 am

Back in August, nu-metal heroes Linkin Park released their first new song since the passing of lead singer Chester Bennington in 2017. The song, "She Couldn’t," is a lost B-side from their massive debut Hybrid Theory, which turns 20 this October 24. Built upon a minimalist trip-hop beat and a ghostly Mos Def sample, "She Couldn’t" sounds nothing like the album that came after. There are no crunching guitars, no screamed refrains—just a band in their infancy figuring out the depths of their sound.

Hearing Bennington's voice from out of the ether hits right in the gut. When he’s not screaming away his demons (of which he had many), he could be gentle and sincere. Hybrid Theory B-Side "My December" (not to mention its Reanimation remix "MyHybrid Theory should be better understood as being universally human. 

"There's some pretty pissed-off kids all over the world," Bennington told The Guardian back in 2001. "I think that's a good thing. Anger feeds change—more so than happiness, because I think when people become happy and comfortable they become lazy and melancholy. When there's a little bit of rage behind, you get motivated."

By the year 2000, Linkin Park had plenty to be angry about. Bennington—a troubled kid from Arizona—had just joined the band as a last-ditch attempt at a music career and a life outside of a cubicle. Meanwhile, vocalist/rapper Mike Shinoda, guitarist Brad Delson drummer Rob Bourdon, bassist Dave "Phoenix" Pharrell and DJ Joe Hahn, had spent the better part of the '90s in the L.A. suburbs trying to get their music project off the ground with little success. The band had big plans to change the world, but the world wasn’t ready for them.

Linkin Park eventually landed at Warner Bros, but the label didn’t know what to do with them. First, they wanted the band—who at the time was known as Xero—to change their name (which they did, twice). Then they wanted Shinoda to rap more like Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst. When he declined, they wanted Shinoda out of the band and Bennington to be the star (to which Bennington told the folks at Warner Bros to go… well, you can probably guess). On top of all that, their producer Don Gilmore didn’t like any of their songs, and asked the band to rewrite the whole bunch. It’s a minor miracle that these songs ever saw the light of day, but against all odds, Linkin Park released what would be one of the most successful rock records in history—perhaps the last of its kind to take over the world.

Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Celebrates 20 Years

It’s easy to forget that Hybrid Theory was a debut record. The rap-rock sound they were going for already sounded so fully realized. It wasn’t just hip-hop or grunge; there was metal in there, as well as bits of screamo and electronica. It sounded futuristic. These were carefully crafted pop songs hidden behind layers of guitars and turntable scratches—decidedly more genre-diverse than their nu-metal peers Korn, Slipknot and the aforementioned Limp Bizkit. With hooks for days, Hybrid Theory songs leaned more into Linkin Park's hip-hop influences, and reached for the heights of U2, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails.

And back to that voice. No disrespect to Mike Shinoda, who was an integral part of the band’s unique indebtedness to West Coast hip-hop, but without Bennington, songs like "By Myself," "With You" or "A Place For My Head" probably wouldn’t have had the same impact. The guy didn’t just yell these refrains, he shred them, as if his voice was on the cusp of tearing into pieces. So when Bennington yelled "SHUT UP WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!" on “One Step Closer,” you damn well paid attention. Meanwhile, underneath the theatrics lurked the aforementioned vulnerability looking for human connection.

And boy did it ever connect. Hybrid Theory debuted at number 29 in the U.S. Billboard 200, eventually peaking at number two. It sold 50,000 copies in its first week, and it has since sold roughly 11 million copies in the U.S. alone and around 30 million copies worldwide. As recently as September 11, 2020, it has officially gone 12x platinum. The track list for Hybrid Theory read like a greatest hits collection, because that’s exactly what it was. It produced four singles – "One Step Closer," "Papercut," "Crawling" and “In The End"—each one bigger than the last, the latter of which being the band’s biggest crossover hit at number two on the Billboard 200. And although they weren’t singles, album tracks "Points Of Authority" and "Runaway" made appearances on rock radio as well. The stats almost don’t seem real, but for a good while, Linkin Park really was the biggest band in the world.

It’s not hard to understand why kids connected with the music 20 years ago. For impressionable teens who grew up in the '90s and who were perhaps too young to appreciate grunge when it erupted, too embarrassed to openly enjoy teen pop staples like 'NSYNC or Britney Spears, or too chicken to buy The Marshall Mathers LP with the big "Parental Advisory” sticker on the front, Linkin Park arrived at the right time. This record was everything for millions of kids around the world at the start of the new millennium who needed a band to scream, cry and identify with.

Despite the magnitude of their success, Linkin Park were never quite destined to be the rock revival act you’d list next to fellow early aughts titans The Strokes or The White Stripes. And yet, the massive outpouring of love and tributes upon Chester Bennington’s death in 2017 reframes the band's long-term legacy. Artists, writers and fans flooded blogs and social media to share the impact the band had on their individual lives. There were stories about people whose lives were saved by the band’s music. That same year, a woman in Orlando used a Linkin Park lyric to save a man from jumping off a bridge. There was no hint of shame in these stories. These people weren’t speaking through layers of irony, or offering sheepish condolences for a lost guilty pleasure. These were heartfelt tributes from those same 30 million kids who screamed, cried and identified with every word Bennington and Shinoda sang on Hybrid Theory. These kids knew that Linkin Park was sincere all along. Most important, perhaps, it was proof that while many of us had since moved on through the musical gateway they provided, we always had a place in our hearts for Hybrid Theory and Linkin Park. Finally, we had found a band that was speaking with us, not to us, and in the end, that’s all that ever mattered.

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Saves The Day's Chris Conley Talks 20 Years Of 'Through Being Cool'

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Ahead of the emo-punk standard's 20th anniversary, frontman Chris Conley looks back at his band's second LP and addresses some of the cringe-inducing lyrics within
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Oct 31, 2019 - 7:47 am

The irony of an album title like Through Being Cool, Saves The Day's breakthrough second LP, is that the record's 1999 release is precisely what made the emo-pop trailblazers, well, cool.

Not that they think of themselves any differently now, of course. If you ask lead singer Chris Conley about Saves The Day's status as genre innovators, he'd deny, deny, deny.

"We were just doing the Jawbreaker, Foo Fighters thing," he says over the phone. "That's all that was. We certainly didn't invent anything. We were just having fun, and the songs were really good and we were really excited. And then people loved it."

And fans certainly did pick up what the Princeton band was putting down 20 years ago. Merging ultra-catchy, pop-minded hooks (à la their tri-state area influencers, Lifetime) and upbeat tempos with a hard-hitting, short-form punk delivery, Saves The Day's influences were considerably wide-ranging, borrowing ideas from post-grunge radio mainstays Foo Fighters and Smashing Pumpkins and Swedish political punks Refused. Capped off by Conley's whinging wail, Through Being Cool would catapult Saves The Day from Conley's mom's New Jersey basement to MTV (which aired music videos from the band's 2001 airtight follow-up, Stay What You Are) to an opening spot on pop-punk deities Green Day and Blink-182's 2002 Pop Disaster tour.    

Today, you can't scroll through an emo or pop-punk best-of list without seeing Through Being Cool near the top. On Oct. 25, the band released a new reissue of Through Being Cool, which features remastered versions of the original record, plus a handful of never-before-heard demos. There's even a new video for album single "Shoulder To The Wheel," featuring house-party animation from Sarah Schmidt and Ian Ballantyne. And, come Saturday, Nov. 2, the 20th anniversary of Through Being Cool, Saves The Day will play the album in its entirety on four sold-out dates, which kicks off at New Jersey's stomping ground for homegrown artists, Starland Ballroom.

Conley, who is the last original member of Saves The Day, sat down with the Recording Academy to talk about his earliest memories of writing and recording Through Being Cool, shooting its now-iconic cover and how he feels graphic lyrics like "Let me take this awkward saw/ Run it against your thighs" have aged. 

I noticed that when Through Being Cool turned 15 five years ago, you said that it felt like the most important record that Saves The Day did. Do you still feel like that’s true? 

Well, I don't remember saying that, but I think it was absolutely the record that established us an important band in this underground scene, and it was one of the most pivotal chapters of my life. And then we made Stay What You Are a few years later and I think those two records are probably the most important Saves the Day records thus far in terms of establishing our longevity.

You have a brand-new animated video for "Shoulder To The Wheel." Is it true that the band "hated" the original video?

Sometimes I don't know where these things come from. Maybe it was a passing comment and sometimes when you're young, you have intense feelings, but they don't stick around very long. I remember always hating to look at myself on any screen or in photos and that might be a thing. 

There's a story about how we really didn't like our cover of AP, but that was other people that thought things about it that somehow got to Alternative Press, and I was able to finally clear the air with them when I visited them. I said, "I didn't like how I look as a human being, but I never said that to anybody." And so I think that might be where some of that stuff comes from. Maybe somebody overheard me griping about my own self-loathing.

I believe it was Bryan Newman who said that in 2014. You guys were in college when you recorded Through Being Cool, correct?

Yeah. [Founding drummer] Bryan Newman and I had done one year at NYU and the whole time during that year, I would walk over to his dorm and play him songs that I had been writing over in my dorm. And we booked time to record all these songs at the end of the spring semester. Right when we got out of school, it was the beginning of summer of 1999, I think it was late May we went in for 11 days with [producer] Steve Evetts in Trax East in South River, New Jersey. And we tracked it, and we had to book two additional half days because I blew out my voice halfway through vocals. But yeah, that's how that all happened. We were at NYU and I was writing all those songs in New York City. 

When you think about that time, and when you think recording the album that would go on to be so seminal in the genre, does anything in particular stand out for you about the mood in the room and how it felt to be creating this thing?

Well, I specifically remember being in the studio as we were tracking the songs and they were coming together, there was an extreme feeling of excitement and almost bewilderment of how good this thing was. We could tell. And immediately, Bryan and I decided we would defer for the next year at NYU and just hit the road to start touring because we were picking up steam. All that year, after [Saves The Day's 1998 debut album] Can't Slow Down came out, we'd be touring in winter break and then on the weekends we'd be going out playing shows. And every time we'd go out and play a show, more and more people were there singing along. But then we made Through Being Cool and we thought, "Oh my gosh. This is really good. Let's take a year off and let's just commit to touring and do it full-time and just see what happens."

The other thing I remember is just the writing of the songs was incredibly fun, and I could tell that the songs were catchy and cool, and that was just me having fun as a songwriter. I remember at the end of one of the tours for Can't Slow Down, the guys all sat me down and said, "We don't like playing these fast songs. We like your mid-tempo songs more." And so that was a pivotal moment as well where I leaned into the mid-tempo stuff. That was a relief to me because I was only really into fast hardcore for a hot minute. I was really into Gorilla Biscuits and Lifetime for about a year and a half, but my real love is Jawbreaker, Sunny Day Real Estate, Archers Of Loaf, Smashing Pumpkins and stuff like that. And the Foo Fighters' record The Colour And The Shape had come out that year along with the Refused album The Shape Of Punk To Come. We were listening to those albums just non-stop in the van, and those two records are basically the seed of what was to become our sound.

Yeah, and it sounds like you leaned even harder into that mid-tempo style on Stay What You Are.

Well, what's cool is that one day when I was driving to the mixing of Through Being Cool, this is the final two days of working on the album, I had a long drive from my home in Princeton to the studio. And I was digging around in the back of my car for a tape to listen to, and I used to keep tapes just strewn about the car, and I pulled out a tape that wasn't mine and I didn't put there and it was The Beatles the Red or Blue tape where it was the later hits. 

Oh, that's the Blue album. The later hits.

Yeah. I pulled out the Blue tape and I did not like The Beatles at the time. I thought they were only “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” which I love now, but I didn't like back then. And I was like, "All right, cool. I'll put this in." I put it in, and it was all these weird and cool quirky pop songs that were really strange, and I was instantly hooked. And so I show up at the studio and I told Steve that I found this Beatles tape in the back of the car and he was like, "Oh my god, dude. The Beatles are my favorite band ever."

And so then when we went for lunch that day, when we went into his car, he put on Revolver and Rubber Soul and he was showing me how if you turn the speaker all the way to the left you can hear just the background vocals and ride cymbal and then if you turn it all the way to the right, it's the guitar and the main vocal. And I remember we drove back to the studio and on that day, this is my first day getting into The Beatles, I thought John Lennon sang all the songs. And he was like, "Wait, you can't tell the difference between John and Paul?" I was like, "Wait, there's two singers?" He's like, "Yeah." He's like, "I can't believe you can't hear that." And now it's crazy to me that I couldn't tell the difference between the two of them.

Discovering The Beatles in that moment is what led to Stay What You Are becoming a more expansive sound and coupled with a few other important life events, like flipping our van, having a near-death experience and really seeing through the surface of the superficial aspect of life and starting to question what is this all about, which informed the lyrics. We were also on tour and doing a little bit of the rock and roll thing. You never know what somebody slips into your drink and so music starts to sound really, really cool if you're in a certain mood. And so The Beatles just blew my mind and so that's how you get songs like "Cars And Calories" on Stay What You Are and songs like "Certain Tragedy."

Nowadays Saves The Day gets referenced as helping to generate a new, perhaps more accessible wave of pop-punk and emo. When you were touring this record, did you guys feel like you were breaking new ground? 

Oh, no. Absolutely not. We were just doing the Jawbreaker, Foo Fighters thing. That's all that was. We certainly didn't invent anything. We were just having fun and it was the songs were really good and we were really excited. And then people loved it.

I think I mean more in a mainstream, commercial sense. For instance, Nirvana were hailed as grunge innovators, but Kurt Cobain would say he was just trying to emulate lesser-known acts like Pixies and the Vaselines. 

I can see what you mean in terms of Nirvana, but I would never be able to wrap my head around thinking about Saves in that same way just in terms of putting a new spin on things, an already established sound, but really I'm just a fan of music. I love what I love and so when Bryan and I first started playing music together, everything we did sounded like Sunny Day Real Estate and Smashing Pumpkins because I was obsessed with those bands. And so that's still the case. You're just influenced by your surroundings and I'm largely who I am because of my parents and I worship them, I love them. Then you learn what you learn in school and you start to think that way and talk that way. And I listen to records and I learn, I read books and study lyrics and I learn. And then it's like a call and response.

Yeah. From my perspective, what you did at that time really helped popularize a lot of sounds, in the mainstream sense.

And that part of it just blows my mind, the fact that we are influential at all is just crazy. That's bewildering in and of itself. And it's also extremely humbling. It's surreal. You know what I mean? I'm incredibly grateful and it's just so cool and so fun.

I want to talk about the record cover, which has to be one of the more instantly recognizable covers of the emo genre. How did you conceptualized the cover of that album? It's a very classic feeling of being at a party and feeling like, "Why am I here. I don't think I belong. I don't know what to say."

Yeah, that was exactly how I felt then and how I feel now. I was so obsessed with the band Lifetime and they were from New Jersey, and they would play shows all the time in Princeton and New Brunswick, which was just right down the road. And in the hardcore punk scene, there's no tall stages, there's no rock stars. It's a community. And so if you hung around after the show, you could meet the band. And so me being as obsessed as I was, I would sit there and help them pack up their gear. They're like, "Man, you're so awesome. You're so nice. Who are you?" And so I'm like, "Hey, I'm Chris. I'm your biggest fan." And Ari Katz, the singer of Lifetime, worked at a record store in New Brunswick.

And so as soon as I got my license, incidentally I would drive after school every day to his record store where he worked. After being there every day for week after week after week and annoying the hell out of him, he finally relented and he was like, "All right. Let's talk." And the first thing he did was, "Can you give me a ride somewhere?" And so we'd start going wherever, he's like, "Head left here. Head right there." He's like, "Pull over here. Park here." We wind up at a head shop and he goes in and buys a bong or something, a pipe or a bong.

And then he gets back in the car and he looks at me. He's like, "I bet you thought a straight-edge band wouldn't be taking you to a head shop." And I was like ... I had no idea. I was just in awe of the fact that I was hanging out with him, but he started telling me about music in that car ride and saying how to make his voice better, he would sing along with Elvis records and how he really loved Elvis Costello as well. When we got back to the record store and continuing that conversation he said, "My favorite record right now is this Devo record." And I forget what the name of the album is [Editor's note: the album is 1981's New Traditionalists], but the first song on the album is called "Through Being Cool." And it goes, "We're through being cool. We're through ... " And so that's how I got the idea to use that name. And when we finally played the record release show for Through Being Cool, we brought our own record player and hooked it up to the PA and played Devo's "Through Being Cool" as we walked on.

And there's also a Jawbreaker song at the end of Dear You. There's an acoustic song where he says, "Wake me up when you're through being cool because I'm snoring." And Blake Schwarzenbach from Jawbreaker is my favorite lyricist of all time. He is so intertwined with my DNA that I would sit there and read his words like they were actual poetry, which they are. 

Do you remember the day you shot the album cover?

Yeah. In terms of the shoot, yeah, I remember it all really well. We borrowed Kate Reddy sister's apartment in Queens. Kate Reddy is from the band 108. She's a guitar player from 108 and she had her solo project, Project Kate, which is acoustic music that we absolutely loved. In fact, it's the reason that Saves The Day started making acoustic music at all. But Kate is married to Steve Reddy who owns Equal Vision. They'd set up the day at this apartment because Bryan and David Soloway, in our band, both took photography their entire life at our high school Princeton Day School and then went on to study photography in college as well.

The two of them were obsessed with David LaChapelle at the time, who was doing lots of photo shoots for Rolling Stone and magazines like that where he would set up these really elaborate sets that looked like movies. And I said this before for an Alternative Press piece recently so it's not anything new, but that was their inspiration entirely and when we used to be driving around planning the layout, the two of them were just so excited talking about this idea of having it be a party, but we were over it. We don't even want to be there. And then we lose David and have to find him and so they set up this whole story, and we shot it, afterwards we sent it to Equal Vision and a few of the people from Equal Vision were like, "Wait a second. We don't get it. We don't understand."

We said, "No, it's okay. It's kind of tongue-in-cheek. It doesn't have to take itself too seriously. It's just a fun record." We invited all of our friends and friends of friends and people we'd met through shows and in the scene to come and just have a party. We had the time of our lives. There's friends from high school there, there's friends from shows, there's friends that have come and gone, and it's wild to look back on it now and to still know so many people from that shoot and to all be sort of sharing this strange and surreal journey that that album launched.

Well, before I let you go, I wanted to get your take on something. Saves The Day, and this album in particular, has gotten pushback in recent years for some of your more graphic lyrics. I'm specifically thinking of verbiage like “Let me take this awkward saw/ run it against your thighs/ Cut some flesh away,” etc. I’m sure this wouldn’t be the first time anyone’s asked you about this, but I was curious, with the anniversary of this album, what’s your view on how Saves The Day’s lyrics have aged?

Yeah. Well, you know what's completely funny to me? I can't speak for anybody else's lyrics, but none of those songs are about anybody. That song ["Rocks Tonic Juice Magic"] was an assignment for an NYU writing class to talk about extreme feelings of anger and frustration and rage. There is no person attached to that song. That's just a vehicle for the feelings of frustration to live in a vignette, and that's poetic license. One of my favorite lyricists, who's also controversial these days, was Morrissey, and he'd write lines like, "If a 10-ton truck kills both of us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die." I just love that. Who knows if there's anybody in that, and that's none of my business, but I do know where I was coming from so I have zero feelings of hesitation or guilt when it comes to this.

And I've said this recently in a piece where the only songs that are about real people are the love songs. Then there are a couple of the angry songs about men. There are songs that you might think are about a female that is about a man and not at all romantically. I used to write songs about just friends that were jerks. You know what I mean? Or roommates in college that were just jerks. What's wild to me is it's an interesting thing to think about. You never know where someone's coming from, anyway. Thank god I know where I was coming from so I can clear the air there, and I'm glad that you mentioned it because when people first started coming up to me saying, "This song is really negative toward females," I was literally surprised.

That would never have occurred to me because it was never what it was about. It was just about my own personal emotions, and clearly I am incredibly emo. Those feelings are universal. I wrote "In Reverie" about feeling disconnected from God and it feels like it's a love letter about a lost lover, but I just felt I wanted to go back home. I just wanted to feel that love again. There's a song "Tomorrow Too Late" that says, "When was the last time I held you all through the night," whatever, "And never a worry would run through my heart like a knife. Feels like a zillion years," whatever. That's a spiritual song. That's spiritual loneliness and solitude and isolation and alienation. I think it's good that you asked me because artists do have to be accountable for what they truly mean and their work is important because it affects people's lives and so I think it's important for me to be able to clarify that.

Yeah, I figured that this was a well-worn topic of conversation for you, and I appreciate you going there with me again now. I'm also interested in your take on how critics have reassessed emo as a genre that is generally violent and dismissive toward women.

That's a shame, and if people are misinterpreting what I was saying had anything to contribute to that, I will go to my grave feeling bad about that, but at the same time, that wasn't my intention. Really, it's a reflection of those people and their inner world. It has nothing to do with me.

If you want to know how I feel about women, in "Shoulder To The Wheel" I say, "I'm having a bad week and I miss my mom." My mom is the only reason I made it through this world, her unconditional love and support and she's the most amazing person I've ever known. And so if you're raised by a strong woman, it doesn't even come across your mind to feel any differently. You just feel respect and there's a reverence there and gratitude.

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A Million Miles of Fun: Listening To Len's "Steal My Sunshine" 20 Years L-A-T-E-R

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There were plenty of weird hits in the '90s, but there is absolutely nothing normal about “Steal My Sunshine," from Len’s genre to its famous sampled riff. And don’t even start us on the lyrics
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 23, 2019 - 10:28 am

The 1990s, particularly the musical culture that defined the decade, was marked by a lot of things: irony, disaffectedness, angst. But "randomness" might be the most crucial component. '90s radio was a Wild West of jock jams, Pearl Jam and Nirvana imitators, ska, big band swing, the tail end of New Jack swing, the front end of Timbaland and people of all walks of life who rapped with varying degrees of success, sometimes over loud guitars. And Cake. At least the 2010s developed social media as a support network to espouse complicated feelings over something like Rebecca Black (or "OId Town Road," for that matter). The '90s did not provide memes to bring people together and help make sense of "Tubthumping." We were all alone. But we made it.

Len's "Steal My Sunshine" was one of the decade's last true non-sequiturs. It doesn't matter that the mysterious Canadian outfit put out two albums before "Sunshine" home You Can't Stop the Bum Rush or has since apparently released two others. Len, definitively, in the public eye, came from nowhere, to whence they returned, but not before offering history some butter tarts. (If you've been wondering for 20 years, the Canadian treat resembles mini pecan pies sans pecans. They're better than you think.)

No one knows who "Len" is supposed to be, least of all Marc and Sharon Costanzo, the brother and sister who became one-hit wonders under that moniker. That's asking dangerous questions, like who Harvey Danger is or what the "182" in Blink-182 stands for. Let the chaos be and it will reward you with pop bliss. So we are avowedly not going to steal everybody’s collective sunshine and run "Now the funny glare to pay a gleaming tare in a staring under heat / Involved an under usual feat / And I'm not only among but I invite who I want to come" through Google Translate.

We are going to celebrate the Costanzo siblings’ giggly homemade boredom, though, because it gives that of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas a run for their (piles of) money. You Can't Stop the Bum Rush is a pinnacle of randomness, the cherry (or smoked salmon) on the Dadaist sundae that is the 1990s. Musicians on this thing include hip-hop pioneers Kurtis Blow and Biz Markie, Poison guitarist C.C. Deville, Broken Social Scene plug Brendan Canning and future croaky alt-rap cult hero Buck 65, who also appears in cartoon form on the cover, second from left. The only thing more unlikely than this combination of people is the album bearing a hit single, which of course sounds like none of the above-named artists. (In this ridiculously entertaining interview with Marc Costanzo, he says Sum 41's Deryck Whibley was present when he recorded vocals. Was every Canadian musician involved with Len? Did 13-year-old Drake deliver pizza to the studio?)

Because this was the '90s, Len weren’t even the only Canadians working the Completely Irreplicable and Somewhat Frighteningly Eclectic circuit; sh*t would’ve hit the fan if Bran Van 3000 started a turf war (those kids had a girl-group cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize" that starts acoustic and ends techno). But Len were The Killers to BV3’s The Bravery, so to speak, and their reward was a song that your regular, non-weird-music friends remember in 2019.

"Steal My Sunshine" is one of those tunes that was everywhere in part because the seeds for it had been planted in part by the Andrea True Connection’s "More, More, More" saturating discos in 1976 (True herself had a bonkers story, acting in more than 50 porn films before reaching Number Four on the Hot 100). "Sunshine," which sampled True’s bridge for that iconic opening hook, was merely its final form. Stylistically, "Steal My Sunshine" is inarguably pop, though the tone of it is gloriously incongruent even with itself. Marc and Sharon’s voices border on twee, with a breezy delivery that speaks to directly to the song’s famous soft-serve vibe.

But the words, whatever you make of them, speak to fighting off something dark. Taking a cue from the canned candid dialogue of Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” the Costanzos’ verses each begin with concerned friends discussing them: “Man, I’ve never seen Sharon look so bad before.” But this alarm is confusingly offset by the cheery narrators themselves. Are we supposed to believe Sharon’s hit rock bottom because she’s made [checks notes] an “eight-foot heap” of Slurpee straws? (Holy hell that’s a specific and esoteric image.) Is this a weird Canadian in-joke? Depression in 1999 sounds significantly preferable to depression in 2019.

The chorus, which everybody kind of knows (did you know you were going to be singing “keeping dumb and built to beat” before it appeared on the karaoke screen? You did not), has a loving sound to it, of the two reassuring each other of things that may keep their heads up. But that’s under the strange stipulation of promising to steal each other’s sunshine, not to prevent the thievery of said Vitamin D. This threatens to blow “Steal My Sunshine” wide open as potentially the most mysterious are-they-vampires song since Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom.”

You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, on its face, looks like the weirdest part of the Len saga. Once it gets the hit out of the way, the rapping begins (“Cryptik Souls Crew,” “Beautiful Day”), in comes with the squeal of rock guitar (“Feelin’ Alright,” “Cheekybugger”), and occasionally some atmospheric lounge funk (“Junebug”) or krautrock (“The Hard Disk Approach”) takes up residence like they’re the friggin’ Avalanches. But plenty of ‘90s radio anomalies made albums that sounded nothing like their reason for being (wait ‘til you hear the rest of the Sugar Ray album “Fly” is on) and the biggest shock is how little “Steal My Sunshine” — which is very possibly an anti-sunshine song — makes sense when held up to the, um, light.

Ultimately, the underlying bizarreness, enigmatic characters (in that aforementioned Stereogum interview, Marc Costanzo mentions in passing that he and his sister “really haven’t talked in a while” as of 2016), and uncanny industry connections only serve to further cement “Steal My Sunshine” as a legendary pop blip. If you have more questions than answers now about a sweet tune that you assumed had less to ponder than, say, “Closing Time,” well, you’re welcome. Bring on the memes. Your move, Lil Nas X.

Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

A girl looks at a photograph of Ewan McGregor who played Renton in the film 'Trainspotting' before the Private view for ?Look At Me - A Retrospective?

Photo of Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting

 

Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

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How The 'Trainspotting' Soundtrack Turned A Dispatch From The Fringes Into A Cult Classic

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Twenty-five years after 'Trainspotting' first thrilled and scandalized moviegoers, the film's soundtrack remains an iconic collision of Britpop, rock and dance music
Jack Tregoning
GRAMMYs
Feb 28, 2021 - 3:43 pm

From its opening shot, Trainspotting is a movie in motion. As sneakers hit the sidewalk of Princes Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, we hear the raucous drumbeat of Iggy Pop's 1977 barnstormer "Lust For Life." Renton—played by Ewan McGregor—and Spud—by Ewen Bremner—sprint away from two security guards, their shoplifting spoils flying out of their pockets. 

"Choose life," Renton's narration begins, introducing an instantly classic monologue about the emptiness of middle-class aspirations. The action then zips to a soccer match that introduces Renton's ragtag mates: Spud, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Begbie (Robert Carlyle) and Tommy (Kevin McKidd). The scene is all propulsion and attitude, with Iggy Pop dropping the match on the trail of fuel. In just 60 exhilarating seconds, Trainspotting tells us precisely what it's going to be.

Trainspotting burst into U.K. cinemas in February 1996, followed immediately by a debate on whether its fizzing depiction of junkie life glorified drug use. Audiences staggered out, scandalized and delighted in equal measure by "The Worst Toilet In Scotland," Spud's soiled sheets and a ceiling-crawling baby. By the time it opened in the US in May, the movie was already a critical and box office hit at home. Its credentials were undeniable, including a compelling young cast led by newcomer McGregor, a visually daring director in Danny Boyle and a script adapted from Irvine Welsh's cult book of the same name. 

In a year dominated by slick Hollywood blockbusters like Independence Day, Twister and Mission: Impossible, Trainspotting was the scrappy, no-kids-allowed outsider that could. One of the movie's most significant talking points, and a key reason for its enduring legacy, was its use of "needle drops" in lieu of a traditional composerly film score. The soundtrack reaches back to the '70s and '80s, while also showcasing of-the-moment Britpop and dance music. The music of Trainspotting endures because it's intrinsic to the movie, with each song meant to elevate a particular scene or moment. 

Read: How 1995 Became The Year Dance Music Albums Came Of Age

Welsh's 1993 novel frames Renton's misadventures as a heroin addict against the dismal backdrop of Leith, just north of Edinburgh's city center. Trainspotting was first adapted as a stage play, with Ewen Bremner (perfectly cast as Spud in the movie) playing Renton. Before long, the movie offers rolled in. "There was loads of interest," Welsh told Vice in 2016. "Everybody seemed to want to make a film of Trainspotting."

Most directors wanted to ground the adaptation in social realism, but Welsh knew Trainspotting needed a wilder take. In 1994, a promising young director called Danny Boyle had made his feature debut with the pitch-black comedy Shallow Grave, starring Ewan McGregor. Impressed by the movie's visual flair, Welsh gave Boyle the keys to Trainspotting. 

The making of the movie was a thrill for all involved. Fresh from writing Shallow Grave, screenwriter John Hodge relished the opportunity to adapt Welsh's book for the screen. (Hodge was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1997 Academy Awards - the movie's only Oscar nod.) Before filming, Boyle sent his actors to spend time with Calton Athletic, a real-life recovery group for addicts. The shoot began in June 1995 and lasted 35 days (a step up from the 30 allocated for Shallow Grave), with Glasgow mostly standing in for Edinburgh. 

Alongside cinematographer Brian Tufano, Boyle brought a bold, kinetic style to every shot. "We'd set out to make as pleasurable a film as possible about subject matter that is almost unwatchable," Boyle told HiBrow in 2018. 

While Shallow Grave gave an early glimpse of Boyle's tastes, including his fondness for electronic duo Leftfield, the music in Trainspotting demanded a bigger role. Welsh's book is peppered with references to The Smiths, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and David Bowie, so the call went out to a select list of musical icons. Bowie was a no, but others who'd loved the novel happily offered up their music to the project. 

Welsh and Boyle were both clued-in to acid house and rave culture (represented on the soundtrack by the likes of Underworld, Leftfield and John Digweed and Nick Muir's Bedrock project), but it was the director's idea to bring in the likes of Blur and Pulp. That decision was a "masterstroke", Welsh told Vice, because "Britpop was kind of the last strand of British youth culture, and it helped position the film as being the last movie of British youth culture."

Several of the best scenes in Trainspotting are soundtracked by songs made before 1990. Following "Lust For Life", the sleazy strut of Iggy Pop's 1977 track "Nightclubbing" lurks behind a sequence of Renton's relapse into heroin. (Both songs were co-written by David Bowie, giving him an honorary spot on the soundtrack.) New Order's 1981 song "Temptation" is a motif for Renton's taboo relationship with high schooler Diane (Kelly Macdonald in her first film role), while Heaven 17's 1983 pop hit "Temptation" plays at the club where they first meet. 

Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" lands the hardest punch. In a dazzling sequence, Renton visits his dealer Mother Superior (Peter Mullan) for a hit of heroin. As Renton's body sinks almost romantically into the floor, we hear Lou Reed softly singing about a perfect day drinking sangria in the park. The romance ends there. Knowing an overdose on sight, Mother Superior drags his sort-of friend to the street, then heaves him into a taxi, tucking the fare in his shirt pocket. (In a brilliant small detail, we see an ambulance rush past, headed for someone else.) 

"Perfect Day" keeps on at its languid pace as Renton is ejected at the hospital, hauled onto a stretcher and revived by a nurse with a needle to his arm. "You're going to reap just what you sow," Lou Reed sings as Renton gasps wildly for air. 

Boyle pushed for Britpop on the soundtrack, but he didn't want obvious hits. Britpop, a genre coined in the '90s to describe a new wave of British bands influenced by everything from the Beatles to the late '80s "Madchester" scene, was at its peak during the Trainspotting shoot in the summer of 1995. Pulp had just released the Britpop anthem "Common People," Elastica and Supergrass were flying high from their debut albums, and genre superstars Oasis and Blur were locked in a media-fueled battle for chart supremacy. 

In the heat of all that hype, Boyle reached back to 1991 and took "Sing" from Blur's debut album, Leisure. The song's stirring piano melody picks up after the "Nightclubbing" sequence, as Renton and his fellow addicts hit a harrowing rock bottom. Later, when Begbie busts in on Renton's new life in London, Pulp's "Mile End" underlines the mood of big city ennui. Along with contributions from Elastica and Blur frontman Damon Albarn, Trainspotting draws on just enough Britpop to keep its cool. 

If Trainspotting has a signature song, it's Underworld's "Born Slippy .NUXX". The duo of Rick Smith and Karl Hyde already had three albums behind them when Boyle reached out to use their 1995 B-side in his movie's climax. The duo was wary—as Smith later put it to Noisey, their music was often sought out to accompany "a scene of mayhem"—but Boyle convinced them with a snippet of the film. Underworld also contributed the propulsive "Dark & Long" to the indelible scene of Renton detoxing inside his childhood bedroom. After Trainspotting, "Born Slippy .NUXX" became the defining song of Underworld's career and a constant euphoric peak in their live sets. 

Just as Trainspotting caught the Britpop zeitgeist, it also immortalized a high point for dance music. A rush of trailblazing dance albums came out in 1995, including Leftfield's Leftism, The Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust and Goldie's Timeless. In a time of rave culture colliding with chart hits, the movie finds room for both the dark electronics of Leftfield's "A Final Hit" and the goofy Eurodance of Ice MC's "Think About The Way". 

In one scene, Renton sits grinning between the speakers at a London nightclub that's going off to Bedrock and KYO's 1993 classic "For What You Dream Of." "Diane was right," he narrates, recalling a conversation from before he left Edinburgh. "The world is changing, music is changing, drugs are changing, even men and women are changing." For the briefest moment, we see the thrill of '90s dance music as it really was. 

The Trainspotting soundtrack album hit shelves in July of 1996. The cover played on the movie's iconic poster design, framing the characters in vivid orange. The soundtrack sold so well that a second volume followed in 1997, featuring other songs from the movie and a few that missed the cut. (The same year, the hugely popular Romeo + Juliet soundtrack also inspired a "Vol. 2.") 

Boyle continued to use music as a key character in his movies, following up Trainspotting with the madcap Americana of A Life Less Ordinary and the pop-meets-electronica of The Beach. After 20 years, Boyle got the gang back together for 2017's T2 Trainspotting. In contrast to the original's wall-to-wall needle drops, the sequel weaved a score by Underworld's Rick Smith around songs by High Contrast, Wolf Alice and Young Fathers. 

Many impressive, star-studded soundtracks followed in the wake of Trainspotting. What makes this one rare, though, is how deeply its unholy union of rock, Britpop and dance music belongs to the movie. Remove any needle drop from a scene in Trainspotting, however fleeting, and it'd lose something vital—that's how you know it's built to last.

How 1995 Became A Blockbuster Year For Movie Soundtracks

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Dave Mason

Dave Mason

Photo: Chris Jensen

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Dave Mason On Recording With Rock Royalty & Why He Reimagined His Debut Solo Album, 'Alone Together'

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The ex-Traffic guitarist has played with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to George Harrison to Fleetwood Mac—now, he's taken another stab at his classic 1970 debut solo album
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jan 4, 2021 - 3:33 pm

Dave Mason is charmingly blasé when looking back at his life and career, which any guitarist would rightfully give their fretting hand to have. "I did 'All Along The Watchtower' with Hendrix," he flatly tells GRAMMY.com, as if announcing that he checked the mail today. "George [Harrison] played me Sgt. Pepper's at his house before it came out," he adds with a level of awe applicable to an evening at the neighbors' for casserole. 

Last year, Mason re-recorded his 1970 debut solo album, Alone Together, which most artists would consider a career-capping milestone. When describing the project's origins, he remains nonchalant: "It was for my own amusement, to be honest with you." 

Fifteen years ago, when the Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer started to kick around the album's songs once again in the studio, he didn't think it was for public consumption—until his wife and colleagues encouraged him to reverse that stance. On his latest release, Mason gives longtime listeners and new fans an updated take on the timeless Alone Together, this time featuring his modern-day road dogs, a fresh coat of production paint and a winking addendum in the title: Again.

Alone Together…Again, which was released last November physically via Barham Productions and digitally via Shelter Records, does what In The Blue Light (2018) and Tea For The Tillerman² (2020) did for Paul Simon and Yusuf / Cat Stevens, respectively. It allows Mason, a prestige artist, to take another stab at songs from his young manhood. Now, songs like "Only You Know And I Know," "Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave" and "Just A Song," which demonstrated Mason's ahead-of-the-curve writing ability so early in his career, get rawer, edgier redos here.

Mason cofounded Traffic in 1967 and appeared on the Birmingham rock band's first two albums, Mr. Fantasy (1967) and Traffic (1968). The latter featured one of Mason's signature songs: "Feelin' Alright?" which Joe Cocker, Three Dog Night and The Jackson 5 recorded. After weaving in and out of Traffic's ranks multiple times, Mason took the tunes he planned for their next album and tracked them with a murderers' row of studio greats in 1970. (That year, Traffic released John Barleycorn Must Die, sans Mason, which is widely regarded as their progressive folk masterpiece.)

Over the ensuing half-century, Mason has toured steadily while accruing an impressive body of work as a solo artist; Alone Together...Again is a welcomed reminder of where it all began. 

GRAMMY.com caught up with Dave Mason to talk about his departure from Traffic, his memories of the original Alone Together and why the new 2020 takes are, in his words, "so much better."

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Where do you feel Alone Together stands in your body of work? Is it your favorite album you've made?

No, I wouldn't say it's the favorite, but it's sort of spread out. When people ask me, "Well, what's your favorite music? What are you listening to?" I'm like, "I don't know. Which genre do you want me to talk about?" I can't pick it out and say it's my all-time favorite. There are other things I like just as much.

I mean from your solo canon, specifically.

Well, even from a solo thing, 26 Letters, 12 Notes, which I put out [in 2008], went right under the radar, because trying to put new stuff out these days is … an exercise in futility. And that was a great album! Really good. [Alone Together] definitely had great songs on it, and it still holds up, redone. So, from that point of view, it's great. It's probably one of my faves, yes.

When you made the original album, you had just left Traffic, correct?

Pretty much after the second album [1968's Traffic], I moved over here in 1969, to the U.S., for a couple of reasons. Traffic was not a viable option for me anymore, from the other three's point of view. So I decided to come to the place where everything originated from, which is America. Bluegrass, which had its roots in Europe and everything else, is uniquely American music. So that, and probably the 98-cents-to-the-dollar taxes, too. But I mostly came here for musical reasons.

Which divergent creative directions did you and the other Traffic guys wish to go in?

Had that not have happened, all those songs on Alone Together would have been on the next Traffic album.

Read: WATCH: Dave Mason & The Quarantines Uplift With New Video Version Of "Feelin' Alright"

You had quite an ensemble for the original Alone Together: pianist Leon Russell, vocalist Rita Coolidge, bassist Chris Etheridge and others. Were there specific creative reasons for involving these musicians? Or was it more in the spirit of getting some friends together?

I knew Rita and a few other people from early on, being in Delaney & Bonnie. All those people kind of knew each other. Leon Russell was new. I think Rita was going out with Leon at the time. A lot of them were gathered together by Tommy LiPuma, who coproduced Alone Together with me. Otherwise, I was just new here. I didn't know who was who.
Many of those guys were the top session guys in town: [drummers] Jim Keltner, Jim Gordon and [keyboardist] Larry Knechtel, for instance. Leon, I had him play on a couple of songs because I'd met him, I knew him, and I wanted his piano style to be on a couple of things. He put the piano on after the tracks were cut.

Let's flash-forward to Alone Together… Again. Tell me about the musicians you wrangled for this one.

Well, that's my band, the road band that I tour with. [Drummer] Alvino Bennett, [guitarist and background vocalist] Johnne Sambataro—Johnne's been with me for nearly 40 years, on and off—and [keyboardist and bassist] Tony Patler. 

Other than the slight differences in arrangements, there's more energy in the tracks. Other than the vocals, they were pretty much all cut live in the studio. The solos were cut live, because that's my live road band. "Only You Know And I Know," "Look At You Look At Me," "Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave," all those songs have been in my set for 50 years, on and off, so they knew them.

If I never had that session band on the original album and could have taken them on the road for a month, then that original album would have had a little more of an edge to it, probably. This new incarnation of it has more of that live feel. Those boys knew the songs. They didn't really have to think about them, but just get in there and play.

Aside from that, there are slightly different arrangements. "World In Changes" is a major departure, "Sad And Deep As You" was basically a live track cut on XM Radio probably 12, 14 years ago and "Can't Stop Worrying, Can't Stop Loving" is a little bit more fleshed out, which I like. The other songs pretty much stick to the originals. 

"Just A Song," I think, has a little more zip to it. It's got the addition of John McFee from The Doobie Brothers, who put that banjo on it, which is cool. Then there's Gretchen Rhodes, who does a lot of the girl background vocals on these tracks.

What compelled you to change up the rhythm of "World In Changes"?

I just wanted to see what would happen, taking one of my songs and adapting it to something else. I have a version of it cut the way it was originally done, and it was a question of whether I stick to that and put that on the album or do something exciting and totally different. To me, it came out so cool. The sentiment is timeless, and I wanted something on there that was new—an older song, done in a new way.

It seems like you still feel poignancy and urgency in these songs. Besides the fact that the album's 50th anniversary just passed, why did you return to the well of Alone Together?

Well, I started playing around with doing this 15 years ago. Mostly, it was for my own amusement, to be honest with you. But then, as it started to come together, and it was approaching 50 years since the [release of the] original, my wife and some people around me were like, "You should put this out." That's how it all led up to this.

Any other lyrical or musical changes that the average listener may not notice?

As to whether this ever reaches the ears of some new people, it would be nice. It seems unless you have some Twitter trick or social media thing happen, trying to get people aware [is difficult]. In other words, if a younger audience could hear this, I'm pretty sure they would like it. You'll probably have some people out there—the purists—but otherwise, I don't know. 

"Sad And Deep As You" is so much better than the original version, frankly. To me, it holds up. I think my vocals are better, which is one of the big reasons why I decided to redo it in the first place.

When you said "purists," there was an edge in your voice.

[Long chuckle.] Everybody's got their tastes and opinions, and that's the way that is. Same reason they booed Bob Dylan when he had The Band behind him. Some people are that way.

Even if people aren't familiar with the original album, I'd think your backstory would resonate with them. Your role in George Harrison's All Things Must Pass comes to mind.

Yeah, I played on a bunch of things. With All Things Must Pass, I pretty much just played acoustic guitar stuff in there with a group of people … George gave me my first sitar and played me Sgt. Pepper's at his house before it came out. I did "All Along The Watchtower" with Hendrix.

A lot of it's available on my website. There's a lot of cool stuff on there. On my YouTube channel, there's a great live version of "Watchtower" from the Journey and Doobie Brothers tour we did four years ago. But we'd be here for another half hour or more if we went over everybody I appeared with and everything I've been on.

Read: It's Not Always Going To Be This Grey: George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50

Regarding Hendrix, that's an experience that not many other people can say they've had.

Very few. Very few. There are a lot of great guitar players out there, but there are no more Jimi Hendrixes.

You also played with Fleetwood Mac in the '90s, yeah?

I was with Fleetwood Mac from '94 to '96. We did an album called Time, which sort of went under the radar somehow. It didn't get promoted.

Why was that?

I don't know. It's not a bad album, but Warner Bros. was trying to force the issue of getting Stevie Nicks and whatshisname back in there.

Lindsey Buckingham?

Yeah, Lindsey. Christine McVie was on the album, but she didn't go on the road with us. It was kind of weird. The only original members were Mick [Fleetwood] and John [McVie]. It was a little bit like a Fleetwood Mac cover band, but it was cool. It was fun to do for a couple of years, but then they got back together again. C'est la vie. There you go.

Anything else you want to express about reimagining Alone Together 50 years down the road?

I don't think it's just the fact that it's my stuff because there are certain songs I've done that I would not address again. But the thing about those songs is that they all have very timeless themes. "World In Changes," I mean, that could have been written a month ago. To redo them doesn't seem that out of place to me.

Director John McDermott Talks New Jimi Hendrix Documentary, 'Music, Money, Madness … Jimi Hendrix in Maui'

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