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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

Daughtry

Chris Daughtry

Photo courtesy of Daughtry

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The Salvation Of Chris Daughtry: How He Conquered Music-Biz Machinations & Fear Of Irrelevance For Triumphant New Album 'Dearly Beloved'

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On the surface, Chris Daughtry had the best possible outcome for a fourth-place "American Idol" winner: The first Daughtry album made massive sales. But it's only on his newest, 'Dearly Beloved,' that he has complete creative autonomy
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Sep 15, 2021 - 12:38 pm

Chris Daughtry disliked a Dr. Luke and Max Martin song so much he screamed in the studio while recording it. It was late in the recording process for Daughtry, his namesake band's debut album. Despite being an adept songwriter, the people upstairs asked him to record the pop overlords' co-write "Feels Like Tonight" at the eleventh hour. He couldn't connect with slightly generic lyrics like "I was waiting for the day you'd come around / I was chasing, but nothing was all I found." It didn't feel like him.

"There are recordings of me in the vocal booth going 'F*** this song! I hate this f***ing song!" Daughtry tells GRAMMY.com. Despite coming in a respectable fourth place on "American Idol" in 2006, "It was written for me as if I won the show. If I won, this would have been that song that you sing at the end, where the f***ing confetti's falling on you and you're singing [Clenched voice] 'And it feeeeels like...' You know what I mean? That was going to be my celebratory win."

By any measure, Daughtry was a "celebratory win" for the band. It became the fastest-selling debut rock album in history at the time, doing numbers that some out-and-out "Idol" winners might envy. But what's he been up to since? Despite the impressive raw data, the singer's label bosses never quite let him off the leash. Plus, endless executive turnover left him adrift, grasping for and missing ephemeral radio trends. But while Daughtry remains his best-selling work, he's arguably just made the first of his own volition.

That album is Dearly Beloved, the band's first outside of RCA, which will release September 17. (These days, they're rounded out by guitarists Brian Craddock and Josh Steely, keyboardist Elvio Fernandes, bassist Josh Paul and drummer Brandon Maclin.) With vibrant highlights like "Desperation," "Heavy is the Crown" and "Break Into My Heart," it's a slick, atmospheric modern rock record with a dystopian-flick vibe. But, more importantly, every second of it is Daughtry's and Daughtry's alone.

What a difference a decade and a half makes: the once-tightly-goateed young man nervously belting the Box Tops' "The Letter" for a skeptical Simon Cowell has sprouted a Michael Stipe-style beard and procured tribal tattoos. Like a streetbound, malnourished Maine Coon rapidly regrowing its coat and gaining healthy weight upon adoption, he looks prosperous and healthy. For the former service manager at a car dealership who's been through hell and back in music, it's been a wild ride to artistic liberation.

If not for his doggedness drive for success, everything about Chris Daughtry's early life suggested anonymity. He worked said day job in North Carolina while obsessed with '90s rockers from Live to Stone Temple Pilots to Alice in Chains, he performed gigs locally.

After an audition for "Rock Star: INXS" in 2005 proved to be a nonstarter, Daughtry auditioned for "American Idol" with a bittersweet overture from Deanna. "This is his dream, and when he married me, he took on my two kids," she exclaimed on-camera through tears. "I'm so emotional because I know this is his chance." His yowling, pitch-perfect version of "The Letter" was his ticket into the show—despite Cowell's rejection due to perceived "rushing" and lack of charisma.

Throughout Season 5, Daughtry climbed and climbed as the show's resident "rock guy" in the stead of Season 4's Bo Bice, who lost only to Carrie Underwood. But where Bice was a shaggy Southern boy, Daughtry looked chiseled, streamlined and severe, a quintessential modern rocker rather than a throwback. While he wound up eliminated in fourth place, he had clear marketability outside of the show. Sure enough, his looks, voice and vibe carved his path into the majors.

Despite the occasional critical jeers and sheer number of chefs in the kitchen on Daughtry—plus, "I hate the way I sound" on that record, he says today—Daughtry felt validated by the response. Later, he said he harbored no fantasies of winning the show. "I don't know how it could have got any better," he expressed in a 2009 interview. "We've sold almost six million records. So I'm not sure where the title [of "Idol" winner] makes that any better."

"We have these conversations with the band all the time: They're like, 'Man, it obviously worked, whatever you were doing.'" Daughtry says today. "I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to critiquing myself. I'm very happy, obviously. I'm super pumped for what it did. And if that meant not knowing what I was doing and just going in there green and riding the wave of excitement, then so be it."

The band's second album, 2009's Leave This Town, was mostly in the aesthetic mold of its predecessor and landed in the ballpark of its sales. Still, getting there wasn't a given: There was every chance of it flopping. "Leave This Town was a very stressful record because we were right off the heels of major success with the first album," Daughtry recalls. "You can't help but feel this unspoken tension and pressure to do that again."

And in the end, "It did okay," he says. "It did one and a half million or so, but I felt like I got the record that I wanted. There was no songs thrown in last minute that I didn't write or something like that. Then I think it progressively got a little more trickier to navigate that balance of digging my heels and playing ball.

"There was a part of me that was also seeing a huge decline in record sales, and correlating that with my own creative relevance or abilities," he continues. "And me going, 'Well, maybe there is something to this. Maybe I do need to be paying attention to what other people are doing, and maybe I do need to be changing with the times.'"

When Daughtry listens to Leave This Town these days, he hears a guy beholden to his influences, yet inching toward his own style. "With a lot of artists that I can go back and listen to, you can hear their influences on their first record a lot more than records that proceed it," he says. "To me, I instantly hear who I was listening to at the time, as opposed to like, 'Oh yeah, that's just me.' But that's just me nitpicking. And I don't know if anybody else would hear it, but I definitely do."

His internal editor and nitpicker might make hay with Daughtry and Leave This Town, but Daughtry has special affection for the band's third record, 2011's Break The Spell. "I love that record," he says. "I had a blast making that one. I think that was one of the records that didn't have any real outside influence, but at the same time, didn't really... Well, it showed in the record sales. I didn't really have a lot of backing from the label either."

It's worth noting that Daughtry's career to date had been haunted by an endless parade of new A&R reps, all subjecting him to a new and confusing vision of the band before dematerializing and being replaced just as quickly—rinse and repeat. 

"With different A&R people, you have different versions of who they think you are," he says, still sounding pained. "This person, they may think you're this kind of band. Nobody really got where to put us. Nobody understood it after our first two records. There was a lot of turnover at RCA and I think we had a different A&R person for every record."

"It was always trying to get to know the next person and trying to explain the type of record you wanted to make, he continues. "Then, in the middle of making one, you find yourself being like, "I don't know if this is what we were going after, but hey! We're playing ball here and everybody wants to make money and be successful.' So I definitely played my part just from being surrounded by peers saying 'Nobody's playing guitars on the radio now. You got to do this to stay relevant.'"

That Chicken Little-style harbinger of the "end of guitars" brought about Break The Spell's 2013 follow-up Baptized, an extremely commercial detour that remains the biggest sticking point for the singer. He's still audibly frustrated about that experience. "Looking back, there were moments where I'm like, 'Yeah, that missed the mark,'" he admits with a wince. "I can see why maybe we got a lot of flak from the fans on, especially, Baptized. That record was an... experiment, for sure."

Read More: Daughtry Is Reborn On Baptized

The band put most of their chips on the electro-pop single "Waiting for Superman," which seemed like a surefire slam dunk. "A&R at the time got more excited than I've ever seen an A&R person yet over a song," he says. "And you start to go, 'Oh. Well! if they're that excited, that must mean something good. It felt a little over-the-top pop for me, but I was playing ball. I was mesmerized by the hype that was going on around me."

That hype didn't translate into the marketplace, though: "Waiting for Superman" stalled out at No. 66 on Billboard's Hot 100. At this point, Daughtry's frustration reached its boiling point; the back-of-the-envelope calculus for success made no sense to him. "Wait a minute. I'm doing all the things they're saying to do to get this result, but A. they're not pushing it, B. we're not getting the results," he remembers thinking. "Why am I doing something that I don't fully believe in?"

The relative failure of the single catalyzed a period of depression for the singer. Why had he been signed in the first place if they didn't want him to be him? "I started going downward mentally," he says. "I started second-guessing myself as a writer and performer, and my relevance in this new world of music that I didn't quite understand from the time I started in 2006 to now. It just felt so foreign and different to me, and I wasn't doing what I naturally did, which was rock."

Daughtry fulfilled the band's RCA contract with 2018's Cage To Rattle, which the latest suit pitched to him as a return-to-form rock album. "He's like, 'We're going to f***ing make a rock record,' I'm like, 'Yes!' He's like, "Get [Kings of Leon producer] Jacquire King." I'm like, 'Yes!'" he remembers. "Then, a new A&R person comes in and trumps his say." At that deflating moment where he realized this record would be like the rest, Cage To Rattle began to float away from what Daughtry envisioned.

"They're saying, 'Oh man, you do this song, we're going to have a big hit,'" he says. "I'm like, 'I don't know.' I argued with them. I argued, I argued, I argued. I finally caved. The song did nothing and I was like, 'This is it. Once we're done, we're done. We're parting ways. If they don't take me up, I'm not going to be mad at this.'" In the end, Daughtry "parted ways mutually" with his label and management.

Fast-forward to 2020: As the COVID-19 pandemic became entangled with global racial protests, Daughtry looked at the world, examined his feelings and began to write. "I've never really been one to write about current events, never been a political person, never been anyone to be kind of moved by the things going on around me," he says. "This is the first time that I felt compelled to write how these things made me feel."

Such was the batch of songs that eventually comprised the liberated Dearly Beloved, which Daughtry calls "100 percent, hands down" his favorite record he's made. The single "World on Fire" especially carries the weight of his newfound introspection and world-weariness.

"Right before the s*** hit the fan, Australia was on fire," Daughtry says. And I remember being in the studio and we were just scrolling through Instagram as we do right before a session—we're having our coffee just looking through the news or whatever—and I just remember going, 'Dude, literally, the world is on fire. No matter where you turn, something is totally f***ed.'" And I think [producer] Marti [Frederiksen] was like, "'World on Fire,' man. That's a good song title."

Daughtry

Daughtry. Photo: Sara Fish

Whether or not the glitchy, stadium-scaled rock on Dearly Beloved is your cup of tea, there's a poignant thrill to hearing an artist break out of his industry fetters and do exactly what they want to do. In the videos for both "World On Fire" and "Heavy Is The Crown," Daughtry is cast as a Jack Reacher-style action hero fending off a cabal of shadowy, suited baddies with choreographed moves, which seems pretty biographical. Semi-inscrutably, both end with the same disclaimer: "To be continued."

But those three words seem to sum up Daughtry, who despite commanding millions of fans worldwide, has spent 15 years in the business clearing his throat so he can finally do what he wants to do: Be a rock 'n' roll singer, full stop. Given a crystal ball, is there anything he would tell his 25-year-old self, who, for better or worse, was about to be fed into the thresher of the music business?

"I would say have a clear vision," he concludes. "Because if you don't, someone's going to give you one."

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Tedeschi Trucks Band

(L-R) Derek Trucks, Trey Anastasio, Susan Tedeschi 

Photo: Dave Vann

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Derek Trucks On Tedeschi Trucks Band's 'Layla Revisited' Concert Album: "There Are Some Nights You Feel Like You Can Play Anything"

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Two years ago, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and Phish's Trey Anastasio covered Derek and the Dominos' 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs' live in full. Now, as gigs fire up again, the Tedeschi Trucks Band is sharing the smoking results
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 15, 2021 - 10:48 am

The band Derek and the Dominos launched a generation of guitarists, but they arguably only launched one full-fledged human being. "I was named after that record," the two-time GRAMMY-winning guitar slinger Derek Trucks told JamBands soon after performing their sole studio album, 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, front to back at a festival.

The connections didn't stop there, though: One of his earliest memories is of the LP leaning against—true to Duane Allman's involvement—a peach crate. The GRAMMY-winning singer/guitarist Susan Tedeschi, his wife and creative partner in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, was born on the very day it was released. "I was named after this thing; she was born on the day," Trucks continued. "Pretty good stuff!"

With almost no rehearsal, Tedeschi, Trucks and their pal, Trey Anastasio of Phish, convened to perform Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs at Lockn', an annual jam-band bash known for unique pairings. The result—after a gig-free year and a half—is Layla Revisited (Live at Lockn'), a document of that unrepeatable evening, due out July 16 via Fantasy Records, that will blow your hair back.

Whether together or separately, Tedeschi and Trucks had performed in various settings some of the Eric Clapton-led band's tunes, like "Bell Bottom Blues," "Keep on Growing" and the classic "Layla," Clapton's wounded howl to his BFF George Harrison's then-wife, Pattie Boyd. Trucks had even shared stages with the Strat man known to some as "God," peppering him with requests to perform some of the tunes.

"He had a funny response at one point," Trucks tells GRAMMY.com. "He was like, 'I didn't know people really like that [Derek and the Dominos] record. It seemed like the record that kind of flew by.'" On the contrary, Clapper: Most people think it's your best work. And now, two of your finest protoges are making sure rock fans in the 21st century know it.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Trucks while on the road with Tedeschi Trucks Band to discuss his lifelong relationship with Layla, how the tribute concert came about and why—true to the one-and-done band—they may never try this album onstage again.

Tell me about your history with Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

It's one of those records that's always been a huge presence from the very beginning. I've had connections with some of the tunes over the years, whether it was playing with my solo band or the Allmans or, eventually, with Eric. But I never sat down to learn the whole thing! [Chuckles.] It was really nice to finally dig into something that had always been there. You uncover more and more the deeper you go into something like that.

I remember that album cover as one of my first memories. It's a striking image—when I was growing up with parents who had vinyl leaning against peach crates in the living room. It's the first stuff you see, so it was a strange thing to eventually play some of that music with Eric in London. I remember Pattie Boyd—"Layla"—came out to one of the shows. A lot of it felt full-circle along the way, but finally playing the whole record felt like something that maybe we needed to do at some point.

To you, is the essence of the record the interplay between Eric and Duane?

That's a lot of it. You can feel what Eric was going through the more you dig into the lyrics of the record and the whole thing. But I think some of it was when you start learning all those guitar parts, you kind of start imagining the way the songs were written. There's a lot of open tunings and capoed guitars and little quirky s**t that just I never thought to dig into. 

You realize he was probably listening to a lot of singer/songwriters at the time. Some of it almost feels like that Tulsa, Western-swing thing. It feels like a different era for him. It wasn't just straight Bluesbreakers stuff. You can tell they were getting into some other things. That's one of the things I noticed digging into the tunes, but definitely, the Eric-and-Duane interplay and that connection.

From what I hear, Eric was excited about the Dominos and they were writing tunes, but the record wasn't really getting off the ground in the way they had hoped. When Duane stepped in out of the blue, the whole thing took on a different life. But also, from what I hear, Duane was that kind of character. He came into the room with the pedal pretty much to the floor. That's how he operated. 

It was this perfect collision. They met at the right time and this amazing thing happened.

What weird little quirks did you find? I'm sure as with many other albums of the era, there are things that wouldn't fly in a studio today.

Yeah, totally. All the best s**t is kind of made that way. You don't think about what it takes to get there; you just hear something in your head and figure it out. 

Even digging into a tune like "Thorn Tree in the Garden," me and Sue recorded it, and I always imagined it sounds like a few people in a room playing and singing. There's at least a third guitar in there. There's one that's just kind of pedaling the harmonics and there's guitars that are not doing much, but if you take that little piece away, you all of a sudden notice that it changes the whole movement of the thing. 

"I Am Yours" is a really uniquely constructed song. You wouldn't pick up a guitar and start strumming those first-position cowboy chords. That's a different way of going about it.

I think you're right on the money by implying that it's not a traditional 12-bar blues album. As you said, there are those cowboy chords and singer/songwriter influences.

Yeah. But then when it's time, it goes straight 12-bar! They're like, "Oh yeah, and then there's this. Let's not forget where it came from." It's a pretty amazing balance in that way.

I'm sure Eric has told you stories about this record.

When I was out with him, I was certainly lobbying to play some of those tunes. He had a funny response at one point. He was like, "I didn't know people really like that [Derek and the Dominos] record. It seemed like the record that kind of flew by." Obviously, "Layla" became the song of the record. But I was like, "No, that's the one, man. That's the one everyone goes to!"

I've noticed that when we did the Mad Dogs and Englishmen thing with Leon Russell, some of these seminal records don't feel that way to the artist when they do them, because maybe it wasn't received that way when it came out. That's your impression of it, and then you just move on down the road and have bigger hits with other things. It doesn't dawn on you that this is the one people really come back to. [Laughs.] So, I thought that was an interesting revelation.

Your Layla concert took place in 2019. Why, at that stage in the arc of your development, did it feel right to tackle that whole record and make a live album out of it?

It was specific to that festival. Every time we play Lockn', part of the thing that makes that festival unique is that they try to pair artists and have these big collaborations. They reached out about doing a few nights with me and Trey—me sitting in with his band one night and him sitting in with our band one night. 

When we were bouncing around ideas, I thought maybe some of the Dominos tunes would be fun, and he had a list of tunes of ours that might be fun to play. We were in Red Rocks, I was about to get on the phone with Trey about finalizing the set, and I mentioned to a friend of mine that we might play a few Dominos tunes, and she was like, "You should just do the whole f***ing record!" [Laughs.] 

Right when she said it, it felt like the most obvious thing in the world. It wasn't something I ever thought we would do. It wasn't something that was long-planned. It was just kind of an idea that made sense. And then the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I remember when I mentioned it to [Trey], that was a record he had studied and listened to a bunch. Susan has an amazing connection to that music too. So, it felt like home at that point.

What was involved in learning the songs and preparing for the gig? I don't know if you had the multitrack—if you could hear the guitars layer by layer.

He was on the road, I believe, and we were on the road pretty nonstop, so it was everyone in their headphones just listening as we were out doing other things. We didn't have any access to anything other than the same material [everyone has]. It was just a lot of listening. Everyone in our band really did our homework and dug into it and [dedicated] a few soundchecks to working up a song at a time.

It was really one full rehearsal with Trey in New York City and then a little half-day of rehearsal when [guitarist] Doyle [Bramhall II] showed up on-site at Lockn'. It came together pretty quickly once everyone was there. When Doyle finally showed up, he was that last ingredient. He had played with Eric so long and I'd played with Doyle together with Eric, so some of those parts fell right into place. 

He's a master of putting things where they need to be. You almost don't notice they're there, but you notice if it's not there. [Laughs.] When Doyle stepped in, I knew the set was going to feel good. It went off, right out of the gate, better than any of us could have hoped, from the first note. 

You could tell there were good nerves onstage from the first song. You can feel everyone's excitement about what we were doing. A few songs in, you can feel that the energy shifted where everyone was fully in it and letting it fly. There are some nights you feel like you can play anything. You don't have to think about it at all. It got to that place, which is rare when you're not doing material you know all that well. 

That was nice, you know? You hope it's going to go off that way. It doesn't always go off that way. It's refreshing to know it wasn't just the energy of the crowd or the excitement of doing it, but it actually held up when we listened back to it. You never know. 

Sometimes, you play a show you think is great, then you go back months or even years later and you go "Well, maybe it'd be more fun if you were there." This one had a different feel to it, and it held up.

Is this the only time you and Susan have performed it in full?

Yeah, and I think it's probably the only time we will do it that way. There's something special about keeping it to that.

Well, it's like the band itself. One and done. Get in and get out.

Totally. Don't let anything f*** up your legacy!

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