As a European, I always thought Hootie and the Blowfish was a made-up band that Ross Monica and Chandler were supposed to be fans of on Friends. I had no idea it was a real, very successful band
As a citizen of the u.s., I wished it were only a fictional band from a sitcom. I couldn't get away from this inept band with that silly crooner fronting it.
Dean V. Seriously wow I didn’t know that. Also there’s kind of a difference between making music and watching some noface bitch about hootie and the blowfish. And the music that’s feature in his videos is drastically different from the music Todd is talking about
Honestly, that song came out too early. If Hoodie released Old Man And Me in the 2000s, it probably would've been a lot more relevant, for better or worse.
@@D0cSwiss are those two things related though? Edit: I checked, the name change happened in 2020, well after they got backlash for not supporting the war and not for any related reason.
I still love that gag from the Simpsons where Chief Wiggum gives Bart a wire and a tape to record the mob. Bart: "Hootie and the Blowfish?" Chief Wiggum: "Yeah its cheaper than a blank tape"
I was in college in 1996, and my roommate had an early class he had trouble getting to, so he set his clock radio to "the worst radio station I could find." One week, every single day at 7:30AM, it was Hootie. It was like being in Groundhog Day.
if I was really late and pulling an all-nighter to finish that paper, I'd put on Genesis' "We Can't Dance" and tell myself "when you've finished you can turn off that album."
@@saucysosI must be missing the album tracks, but most of the singles are my favourite Genesis songs. No Son of Mine, Jesus He Knows Me and I Can't Dance are great songs, wtf?
Okay, having listened to the song a couple times, I’m pretty sure the intended lyric was “I’d love to help the population” (as in “but I’m too sad because of the breakup”) but either they didn’t take the time to edit because they wanted to rush out the album or they liked Darius’s delivery so much they changed the lyric to match
Every time I hear Hootie, I’m reminded of a story my mom told me LOL. She flew in from out of country and ended up in New York, lost. She happened to overhear a group of people talking about getting to their flight 👉🏻 to our homeland of Ohio. Which she was also going to be on. So she asked them if she could tag along because they looked like they knew what they were doing, and they said SURE. So she ran through the airport in New York with them and ended up flying back to Cleveland with them too. It ended up being Hootie and the Blowfish, and they gifted my mom lots of signed merch and cds - which she had no idea who they were 😂! Which they thought was hilarious! So she they were super nice and really wonderful to her, and she spent the flight home hanging out with them. She still tells us that story years later 😅! I still have my signed cd all these years later too! So random! Not that I listen to it, I’m just glad they were cool to my mom! They get my approval just for that!
And that, kids, is how I met your fathers. Just kidding, cool story! They really seem like the type of guys who never were star material, just a bunch of dudes who had fun making music together and then got big for no real reason.
As a kid in the nineties, I knew Hootie-mania was a real phenomenon when my 71 year old, one-legged grandmother looked at me and said "I like Hootie and the Blowfish" out of the blue one night. Kids today just won't understand the dissonance of that. Anyway, Todd, you need to cover DeeDee Ramones' rap album for this series. That is truly a fiasco of epic proportions.
Darius Rucker has probably the most dad energy of anyone I've ever seen even though he was apparently right out of college when this band started. I wonder why he didn't just make an entire album of blatant dad rock and call it a day instead of "hurting the population" or whatever
Thank you for this, Todd - Hootie's mainstream success has been weirdly fascinating to me, and i've done a fair amount of my own research into the topic. A few relevant points to add on to the (well done!) video: 1. The guy who signed Hootie to Atlantic Records was inspired by one particular week's Billboard album chart. Specifically, he noticed that right alongside a bunch of grunge records in the top 10 was Bob Seger's Greatest Hits. That told him there was a large chunk of the music-buying public being ignored by grunge, so (though he doesn't exactly put it this way) he thought there would be money in a new band that played dad rock. Hootie had sent their demo to Atlantic, he listened to it, and they became his baby. He actually had to fight a lot of higher-ups at the label to get them a chance, and even then there wasn't a single music video included in their marketing budget. 2. Cracked Rear View's breakout started with a very clever regional sales strategy on the part of the label. They didn't stock the album much if at all in New York or LA, which is typically a huge no-no in the music business. Their plan? "STOCK NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA LIKE IT'S PEARL JAM!", the idea being that Hootie was already known around the bar scene in those states. This gamble netted over 10,000 copies sold the first week in those two states alone, landing them the #1 spot on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. That's what made the label shift gears and arrange music videos for them. 3. The point that seems to get brought up the least, but one that must be mentioned: Wal-Mart. This was the time when the specialty music chains like Coconuts & Sam Goody had begun to show weakness, and Wal-Mart amped up their music-retail focus in an attempt to take their place. Given Wally World's clientele and refusal to carry albums containing the Parental Advisory sticker, Cracked Rear View was an absolutely *perfect* fit for them. They promoted the heck out of that album once it had started to take off, and you know the rest. Creed seems to be the most well-known case of "Wal-Mart Made My Career", but you could argue Hootie was the first. Again, i don't mean this as a criticism of the video - just a little bonus for the folks who actually read the comments!
Very clever sales strategy indeed ! Of course, I understand why it may have seemed like a gamble but it was actually pretty sound strategy: focus all of your efforts on a region of the country where the album has a better chance of doing well, so that the label will want to promote the band more.
I can distinctly remember seeing a cardboard piece with many copies of this album sitting on it for people to just randomly buy like they were grabbing a bag of chips and some bean dip. It was a cheap no brainer stocking stuffer for Christmas as well.
I’m from Charleston, South Carolina, where the members of Hootie & The Blowfish call home. They throw annual charity concerts that are huge deals. My sister trick-or-treated at Rucker’s house when we were kids. The street leading into the local arena is named after Rucker. I met Mark Bryan, the lead guitarist for the band, at a concert once. Heck, at one point in the video (around 5:20) Todd uses a picture of Rucker that shows him wearing a shirt for a local venue (the Music Farm) that I went to this past Saturday for a show. And despite this, even I have not heard a single song from “Fairweather Johnson”. Can’t wait to figure out why.
I'm from Columbia, SC, but went to college in Charleston and it seemed like he was the hottest thing there since hush puppies. Saw him at a river dogs game as well, and the crowd was so excited.
I live a street over from Darius Rucker, and I've met him out and about a few times. He's a nice dude. Really likes supporting the local music scene. The reunion tour is going to be huge here!
A video of sell-out era KISS and Tupac F'ing Shakur presenting a Grammy Award to Hootie and the Blowfish is the single most 90s thing I have ever seen. That video clip is more 90s than living through the actual 90s was.
@@astroknott5263 I mean, they were shameless commercialists (not many bands, to be frank not many PEOPLE/BRANDS, were so willing to risk being called tacky that they got into the "selling novelty COFFINS" game), but the no make-up era probably qualifies, at least musically/brand wise. It's their "why not just follow what's popular now" period.
Nowadays "Imagine Dragons" seems to have done the same thing by being the perfect radio band that is completely forgettable the moment you turn the radio off.
I think a serial killer would rather write "I'd love to murder every single asshole in this place", or "I'd love to put a bullet in the skull of all the idiots around here". Instead, "I'd love to hurt the population" sounds like the thought of a man who wishes he could be an asshole to vent some steam, but knows he's too wimpy for that... and I *think* that's what the lyrics of the song are going for.
As a black person into rock music for my entire life, my mom always assumed i was totally into Hootie. I had much more refined rock taste like Limp Bizkit, Orgy and Snot.
@@theitfactorjameswheezer2852 hogans career died when he said all that racist shit. they are dragging his corpse around like weekend at bernies at this point
i don’t think they were on the radio stations over here. only time i ever saw or heard them was the american music awards, world music awards, or the grammy’s 🥴
Interesting story, so a while ago after watching this video I asked my mom why Hootie and the Blowfish’s first album went 21x platinum. I would keep bringing it up in conversation how baffling it is they sold that many albums and my mom would laugh at how mad I was about it. Then, I woke up on Christmas morning started unwrapping presents, and I found that my mom bought me a copy of Cracked Rearview on Cd. I now own a copy of Hootie and The Blowfish’s Cracked Rearview, all because of this video. Thanks Todd
As someone who used to work at Goodwill, go to flea markets and garage sales, and still frequents used CD stores, I can say with certainly that Cracked Rearview is EVERYWHERE. It is by far the CD that can be found the easiest. Seriously, it's insane how common it is.
fun fact: Jim DeRogatis, who got fired from Rolling Stone for a negative review of their first album, also opened for Wire on a U.S. tour with a cover band that played the first Wire album in its entirety, since Wire themselves were only playing new songs. DeRogatis is also the guy behind a lot of R. Kelly investigations, so a lot of the dirt we know about him was unveiled in some fashion by DeRogatis.
Learning that journalists can be fired for being honest with their reviews made me realize how garbage most magazines and their "reviews" are. It's been that way for a long time, and it's gross. All the more reason to just ignore reviews and make your own conclusions.
That Darius Rucker wink at the beginning is hilarious. I don't think I've ever seen a musician who exudes so much "dad who's so lame it comes back around to being kind of charming" energy.
I'm glad they got to re-form and have successes again. Too many bands meet such a bitter and contentious end, and these guys all seem too nice to deserve that type of breakup to the band
When I was a baby, my dad had Fairweather Johnson on CD and would put on Sad Caper to get me to stop crying, and apparently it worked every time. I never would’ve thought this album would be on here.
I remember in Ted they make fun of Hootie and the Blowfish when he says "you can sing every 90s song with only vowels" and then sings "Only Wanna Be with You"
That would be annoying. Spot on? I liked the review but that impression was lame (sorry). I don't think it sounds like Darius Rucker at all. If anything, it's a PARODY, but an imitation...really?
I remember at some point in 2002-03 i saw an ad for a balloon festival in the supermarket..the ad said in huge capitals BALLON FESTIVAL, and in a list of the other attractions in smaller print was Hootie and the Blowfish (right above Food Trucks, IIRC). a real-life Spinal Tap moment i got to witness firsthand
I like that you brought up the fct that Hootie had "much less clout in the UK", because as a 38 year old UK resident, I can honestly say, I've never heard a Hootie song until this video! Terrific as always though, Mr In The Shadows.
Hootie was the perfect band at the perfect time. There was a musical vacuum. In 1994 people were tired of the angst, ennui, and pretentiousness. In walks Hootie and the Blowfish like a bloody mary after a long night of drinking. They were our grunge hangover antidote.
I agree. Timing is everything. I remember Todd did a review of "Groove Is In The Heart" and noted that it being released in 1990 was probably the reason the band never caught on, because the song and album would have worked way better in the late 1990s when anything that sound happy or upbeat got big. 1994 was the year Cobain died and that was pretty much the end of grunge. Most of the radio-friendly stuff was already transitioning to alt-rock, so that year in particular there was a desire for more middle-of-the-road stuff. Thus came Hootie.
Hootie and the Blowfish played one of my therapist’s frat parties when he was at UNC Chapel Hill and the band was just getting started. He says he walked in on the band doing coke off his MCAT prep textbook.
There is a huge market for competent but unchallenging music. Just about every performer we "love to hate" is this kind of band. Talented enough to catch attention, vague enough to cross genre and generation barriers; just generally good but kinda boring. Some bands are so much "this" that they release a second album and everyone goes "I already have this."
I feel like a lot of the "Wal-Mart made my career" bands are like this. Both Creed and Nickelback come to mind: just edgy enough to sound interesting, but none were threatening or particularly deep. But they knew what sold and stuck with it. And indeed, both suffered from "wait, isn't this album the same as the last one?" More recently, "Imagine Dragons" feels like this. A really well-constructed radio band with a lot of hits, but I could never tell you a thing about them once you turn the radio off. Engineered to make great pop hits, but there is not a thing interesting or memorable about them. Some others mentioned Maroon 5, and I'd agree. Both are kind of cut from the same cloth.
I was falling aslep but the lyric 'I'd love to hurt the population' startled me awake because HUH WHAT. Also, Tupac, on stage with Kiss, calling Hootie and The Blowfish his boys is so wild to me.
@@RestrainingHollywood Got it on CD just a few days ago from a trip to a local Goodwill; last time I went I got burned on an empty case (which I thankfully caught before buying), so it was nice to grab one that had the actual disc this time. It having the original metallic orange tray in pristine condition helps too.
REM was also a post punk band and so a more exciting act overall live. These Hootie guys sound to me more like a male version of things like Sheryl Crow
I realize if you sing The Rolling Stones with no consonants, you get Hootie. Eee aaaoo ee oo iioooe yeee, ii a aaa oe eeaee aa aaeee. (To the tune of Sympathy for the Devil)
I grew up in SC and still lived there when Hootie got big. They were huge everywhere but in SC they were INSANE. I lived in Clemson, SC though so the Hootie love was dampened a bit. (Hootie is from Columbia, SC home of the Carolina Gamecocks and they were big fans, the gamecocks are the Clemson Tigers’ biggest rival.) I was drug to their concert in Greenville by my friend. They had a mosh pit. I repeat, a mosh pit for a Hootie and the Blowfish show.😳
@@kenterminateddq5311 He's not making fun of Darius's voice in general, just on that album and in the accompanying live performances. Based on this clips, I'm with him. I can't understand the words. That's a problem. On the first album, you could understand him. He dipped a little into hunger dunger dang territory with this album and it didn't go well.
I actually like a lot of Hootie's hits. Not enough to pay money for them (I feel like that goes without saying) but I do think they're pleasant and if one comes on the radio I'll let it play through. It's like hotel lobby music with words: inoffensive, kinda makes you smile if you bother to listen to it, easy to block out if you don't.
I hadn't ever listened to their music. So for the longest time, I thought Hootie and The Blowfish was a psychedelic band from the 60s just based on the name. Not a bar band from the 90s.
I had an adopted brother growing up who was in love with Hootie and the Blowfish’s first album, shared it with my mom, she adored them too. My brother was super into dance and house and my mom pretty much only listened to Wings and Elton John at that time, so they really did cross those genre lines, by a long shot. Suddenly, by album two, it was all, “Hootie, who?” As a young child at the time, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two albums. As an adult, I still really can’t. I just happen to know more songs from the first one.
My main experience of this album was one day in the late 90s when my dad remarked he'd seen it for sale at every garage sale we'd visited that morning.
This reminds me of Asia's career track. They went from the biggest, best-selling album of 1982 to almost insignificant in a year. Granted, Alpha sold well, but it's not well-remembered, it went platinum but it didn't sell 10 million or dominate the album and song charts. And there wasn't any new sonic direction there, either; Alpha was pretty much the same prog-flavored arena rock that made the debut such a smash. Yes, that stuff did go out of style, but not in 1983, when pretty much all the old prog bands were folding into the Big 80s with records like 90125, Genesis' self-titled album, Broadsword and the Beast, Signals...so why didn't Asia share in that success? Probably because 1, it was a crowded freaking market, as you can see up there. Then you add people like Journey to the mix, who were making very similar records, and Asia would totally get lost in the shuffle, to say nothing of all the crazy synthpop and new wave acts that ruled the scene in 1983. 2, the album wasn't nearly as good. Despite their chops, Asia were never as elaborate as King Crimson, ELP, or Yes--where all the members came from--but they had a good bit of punch to their sound, and on Alpha, that just isn't there. It starts to sound more like The Buggles without the quirkiness. And 3, the band was in near-meltdown mode. For disputed reasons, John Wetton left a few months after Alpha's release, forcing the tour's cancellation and resulting in Greg Lake filling in for him at the Asia in Asia concert in Tokyo, which Lake only did as a favor because he didn't like Asia's musical direction. Wetton eventually returned, but only on the condition that Steve Howe was fired. The guitar legend was replaced by a decent, but rather unknown Mandy Meyer for 1985's Astra, which did even worse than Alpha and resulted in the band's break-up. It's very similar to what happened here with Hootie and the Blowfish, because the 90s was full of mush like this that created the Adult Alternative label, which much like late 70s early 80s AOR, blew itself out and now mostly rests on its legacy. Cracked Rear View has songs you can pick out from one another, much like Asia; Fairweather Johnson, much like Alpha, sounds like a lot of the same thing with rule-proving exceptions.
As someone who lived in South Carolina right when Hootie blew up, Hootie and the Blowfish were the bane of my 6th and 7th grade years. I was really getting into music during this time and I heard them on the radio at least 4 times a day.
Todd, I just want you to know that the fact I'm willing to sit through nineteen solid minutes of Hootie and the Blowfish music says a lot about how much I enjoy your work.
I always tell people that mediocre adult alternative radio rock, like Counting Crows and Hootie and the Blowfish, is my jam. I was so excited for this reupload.
I"m pretty sure HATBF were noone's favorite band - but they were "good enough" that everyone thought they were ok and ended up selling a ton of records. Kind of reminds me of The Spin Doctors (who were a less successful version of this phenomena)
2:00 Todd is NOT kidding about how big Hootiemania was. I started listening to modern pop music around early 1995, and Hootie was EVERYWHERE. Cracked Rear View was one of the first half-dozen CDs I ever owned, so I was that 1 in 27 Americans that bought it. I bought both the "Old Man and Me" single CD AND Fairweather Johnson. I don't know why that second album didn't take off. I think it was just more of the same 2 years after they launched. But my theory is that the explosion of home computing -- and more importantly, the Internet -- caused us to finally be able to explore a wider pool of music in a VERY short amount of time. What's more, we could share opinions about it on chat rooms and message boards. We may not have had RUclips or even Napster, but the ingredients of file sharing were there. Websites soon popped up that shipped music worldwide, even before Amazon came to devour them all. That's half the reason you can have 2Pac, Elton John, OMC, Oasis and Jamiroquai on the same chart (to say nothing of bands like The Butthole Surfers, Nada Surf and Squirrel Nut Zippers). Hootie was the quintessential American band, but Americans in some sense wanted something international and/or unconventional. Not to mention, other bands or artists like Duncan Shiek or The Wallflowers clamoring to become the next Hootie.
I think they released this album too soon. The song Time was in the top 20 a few months before this was released. Rearview hadn't run it's course yet. If memory serves, Rearview actually finished in the top 10 best sellers of the year in 96, which is insane to think about. They really should've put this out in 97 or so and i think that's why there was such a backlash against them. They were too big and overexposed. There wasn't a break to allow people to have a time out from them. Another factor here is the lack of singles. It wasn't was poppy, or accessible as Rearview was. Great first single, but it didn't have the potential third or fourth hit single, let alone a second one even.
1995 was such an interesting year in pop culture. Not only was Hootiemania a thing, but so was Windowsmania. Windows 95 might rival Hootie for the amount of sales and hype that was generated that year. So you had major shifts not just in music but in how information was spread and dissected. The Internet was becoming a household commodity around this time. I have no idea if any of this benefitted Hootie, but I think it's just such an interesting point in time. There was such huge shifts in how the world was working by then. I feel like the 90s more than any other decade had such a sharp contrast in the earlier and latter halves. The decade started with pop rap and grunge, then it ended with bands like Hootie and then Swedish Europop and Latin funk revivals. I think Hootie lost popularity just because of how fast everything was moving in the 90s, especially once the Internet became commonplace.
Hootie and the Blowfish were famous enough that they served as a plot point of a season 2 episode of Friends that drew 28 million viewers in 1995. There was even a successful Friends soundtrack album released that year that opened with a Hootie and the Blowfish song.
As a person who spent a lot of my child hood in Bermuda because my dad is from there- I literally had never heard of the Hooties song about Tuckers Point. Which really gives me an idea of how little people cared
Hootie & The Blowfish has to be the most specific American band Todd has ever talked about. I have never heard any of their songs outside his videos and it seems nobody outside the US knows about them.
They were slightly successful in my home country of Australia, as Cracked Rear View peaked in the Top 10 ARIA album charts and "Let Her Cry" was a Top 5 hit.
"Imagine the Zero Punctuation guy writing that." Holy shit Yahtzee totally would. Except there'd be more swear words involved and he'd be talking about another Call of Duty game. Actually now that I think about it, that would've been early ZP, not today's ZP. I'm overthinking this, I know.
You know, when you're ACTUALLY first, you kinda understand how people who comment "first" feel? Like...it feels good and like something you wanna brag about! Still, I'll manage to resist. ...Wait this doesn't count, ri
As someone who buys CD's at thrifts just to download them I relate. I think the worst thing I've come across is the spine/back cover of "Bizzare ride II the Pharcyde" (which my local CD store only has an ultra expensive brand new double CD I don't want) my heart SKIPPED A BEAT over it, but then I pulled it out only to find the front cover/disc was "sounds of the ocean or some shit". OMFG I was pissed. I also was about to re-buy Avril Lavigne's let go but the actual CD inside was her far inferior third album "best damn thing". lol. Thankfully they had THREE cases of what I actually wanted.
They were in that weird 90s genre that was, like, part world music, part jam band, part adult contemporary and part heartland rock Dave Matthews Band, rusted root, Shawn Mullins etc
My dad was the Programming Director at his college’s radio station in the early 90s, and he got offered tickets and backstage access to this little band that was coming through town. He turned it down because “who the fuck is ever going to care about a band called Hootie and the Blowfish?”
I never realized before that Hootie & The Blowfish were the radio-friendly version of Pearl Jam Then again, as you mentioned, they were not big in Europe, and I honestly thought they were a one-hit wonder with that "I Only Wanna Be With You" song for the longest time, so :P
i would love to see a video on cold lake by celtic frost. It's a really interesting album. Celtic frost torched all of their scene cred by going glam and the resulting album is really unique from a 2021 point of view.
@@Jumpscare_Da_Piggy uh what? Every Radiohead album after Pablo Honey has been acclaimed and generally popular and have 4 albums that can be considered among the best albums ever recorded, The Bends, OKC, Kid A and In Rainbows, how in the world would they be a one album wonder??
Idea for Trainwreckords. Yes Please! - Happy Mondays. A album made on crack in Barbados at Eddy Grant's house. That destroyed a band, a record label, a nightclub (ultimately), and a genre (Madchester).
Gotta throw my vote in for Motely Crue's self-titled album with John Corabi. To go from arguably the 2nd biggest band on Earth (behind GNR) to a forgettable fart in the wind in the span of one record is hard to do. But they did it.
I used to flip through music mags at places like Waldenbooks and it was obvious that stuff like Kerrang and Hit Parader didn't have a clue what to do with this grunge stuff, and when the 1994 album was going to be released, they acted like it was the second coming of Jesus ("There's a whole generation of kids who have never seen the Crue! This album is going to be massive!!!!!") Funny how that didn't happen...
Kinda funny when you consider that they spent most of the 80's relatively ignored east of the Atlantic in favor of the Smiths. Granted, much of it has to do with the fact that I.R.S. Records did a piss-poor job distributing their material; the switch to Warner Bros. in 1988 was what ultimately changed that AFAIK.
@@VinchVolt I remember Out of Time, Monster and Automatic for the People. These three albums had one best single after the other. I remember they were everywhere. As I said, they were huge. This was the beginning of the 90´s. And then, they kinda fell off my radar. From being everywhere they were rarely heard of. I remember they song What´s the Frequency Kenneth, a song I never liked. It was heard on the radio a lot, but not as much as their previous singles. And then they kinda disappeared.
I was just reminded that there was an episode of the '90s TGIF sitcom Step by Step called "Forever Young", where Suzanne Somers' character Carol, informs her "fuddy duddy" of a husband, Frank (played by Patrick Duffy) that Hootie and the Blowfish just so happen to be the "biggest, hippest rock band in the country". And this is from February 1996, mind you, less than two months before the release of Fairweather Johnson.
“The Old Man & Me” was originally released on their debut EP, Kootchypop which also contained “Hold My Hand” & “Only Wanna Be with You.” So Old Man is essentially a rejected outtake from Cracked Rear View.
I was in a bar recently, and I heard Old Man and Me end off a rock block that I got started on the jukebox. Listing to it full can perfectly sum up Hootie and the Blowfish. Decent background music about a good discussion point. Yet, it will never really be raised above that. Because, in a bar that sang along to Live Forever by Oasis, this place basically shrugged and said, "Oh yeah, that exists" in bar language. And I can't really blame them.
Hootie is background music while you watch SportsCenter rerun. It never excited me. "Live Forever" 25 years later still gives me goosebumps hearing it. Would you rather be the biggest US band in 1995 or do you want to LIVE Forever, long after you've left the Earth?
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
Fairweather Johnson sounds like a euphemism for erectile dysfunction.
Herobox 1248 *snicker
Brb....gonna watch the Big Lebowski
I thought it was about dick too. Like... unreliable dick?
Herobox 1248 this is the best comment I've seen all month. Congratulations! You should feel proud (I'm serious, that was brilliant)
Lmaoooo 🤣🤣🤣
For a brief moment in this timeline; Hootie, KISS, and Tupac shared a stage together... My mind still hasn't been able to comprehend that.
lmao i was half expecting Kermit to show up
The 90's was a hell of a drug
@@aaronhurst4379 I was young, so it was hitting us harder 😆
1995 in general.
I think society peaked when Tupac KISS and Hootie shared a stage together
This is less a trainwreck and more of a train running out of fuel and sputtering to a stop in the middle of nowhere.
Very accurate
Yeah that's kind of what he implied in the intro you simple bitch.
@@michaelrapaport4494 No need to be so hostile, tough guy.
@@michaelrapaport4494 I get that your username is Michael Rapaport but you don't actually have to act like the man himself.
Braindead furry alert
As a European, I always thought Hootie and the Blowfish was a made-up band that Ross Monica and Chandler were supposed to be fans of on Friends. I had no idea it was a real, very successful band
I thought Chuck Mangione was a fictional cartoon character.
I thought the same when I discovered Huey Lewis in American Psycho, a parody band
Oh my gods, it totally does sound like a fake band name for a sitcom.
Before I watched this video that was literally the only thing I knew this band from
As a citizen of the u.s., I wished it were only a fictional band from a sitcom. I couldn't get away from this inept band with that silly crooner fronting it.
"He's sad because of racism and/or breakup" is just how I'll describe my general mood from now on
A day in America in a nutshell...
"Just discovered thing called racism man this sucks"
I was under the impression Michael Jackson single-handedly solved gang violence and racism through the power of dance in his “Beat It” music video.
@@gildedpeahen876 then it made a comeback in the last decade
@@thomascars1 well he did die in 2009 so…checks out ☑️🫡
The grammy bit with Tupac and KISS still has me in tears.
EmperorTigerstar wow I’m kind of surprised you watch his videos
That’s fascinating
I couldn’t believe it
Kit The weredraolf ETS is a music guy. IIRC he makes all the music for his map videos.
Dean V. Seriously wow I didn’t know that. Also there’s kind of a difference between making music and watching some noface bitch about hootie and the blowfish. And the music that’s feature in his videos is drastically different from the music Todd is talking about
"Nothing offensive about saying 'War is bad'"
Tell that to the Dixie Chicks
Everybody in the US seems to forget that...
Honestly, that song came out too early. If Hoodie released Old Man And Me in the 2000s, it probably would've been a lot more relevant, for better or worse.
There's a reason they're called The Chicks now
@@D0cSwiss are those two things related though?
Edit: I checked, the name change happened in 2020, well after they got backlash for not supporting the war and not for any related reason.
They got cancelled for that?? Well war isnt exactly good.
I still love that gag from the Simpsons where Chief Wiggum gives Bart a wire and a tape to record the mob.
Bart: "Hootie and the Blowfish?"
Chief Wiggum: "Yeah its cheaper than a blank tape"
I once bought a bunch of CDs by a local artist because they were cheaper than buying a box of empty jewel cases.
okay the song fairweather jonson had me bopping right away. then you said it was a forty second joke song and i wanted to hurt the population.
Holy shit this made me laugh
Hurt the population 😄👌👌👌
I was in college in 1996, and my roommate had an early class he had trouble getting to, so he set his clock radio to "the worst radio station I could find." One week, every single day at 7:30AM, it was Hootie. It was like being in Groundhog Day.
if I was really late and pulling an all-nighter to finish that paper, I'd put on Genesis' "We Can't Dance" and tell myself "when you've finished you can turn off that album."
@@silverwheelas a new college student, duly noted. Thank you for the study advice
@@saucysosI must be missing the album tracks, but most of the singles are my favourite Genesis songs. No Son of Mine, Jesus He Knows Me and I Can't Dance are great songs, wtf?
why am I literally in tears laughing at "I'd like to hurt the population" wtf is that lyric bro
Yeah, I know. I heard that and I was like “WTF?!😂” what where they thinking?!
Wanting to hurt the population is one thing, but he could at least be more specific about which population.
@@EpicB yeah, like, at least be specific.
Because it sounds like something that Hitler would say . . . but it's not Hitler-it's Hootie.
Okay, having listened to the song a couple times, I’m pretty sure the intended lyric was “I’d love to help the population” (as in “but I’m too sad because of the breakup”) but either they didn’t take the time to edit because they wanted to rush out the album or they liked Darius’s delivery so much they changed the lyric to match
If you have a fairweather Johnson, it's not the end of the world. A couple of visits to the urologist and you'll be back on top in no time.
Every time I hear Hootie, I’m reminded of a story my mom told me LOL. She flew in from out of country and ended up in New York, lost. She happened to overhear a group of people talking about getting to their flight 👉🏻 to our homeland of Ohio. Which she was also going to be on. So she asked them if she could tag along because they looked like they knew what they were doing, and they said SURE. So she ran through the airport in New York with them and ended up flying back to Cleveland with them too. It ended up being Hootie and the Blowfish, and they gifted my mom lots of signed merch and cds - which she had no idea who they were 😂! Which they thought was hilarious! So she they were super nice and really wonderful to her, and she spent the flight home hanging out with them. She still tells us that story years later 😅! I still have my signed cd all these years later too! So random! Not that I listen to it, I’m just glad they were cool to my mom! They get my approval just for that!
That's quite sweet
That’s an excellent story!
Damn, your mom kinda remade the 'mom getting home' subplot of Home Alone, with Rucker as John Candy.
And that, kids, is how I met your fathers. Just kidding, cool story! They really seem like the type of guys who never were star material, just a bunch of dudes who had fun making music together and then got big for no real reason.
I can just see Hootie sitting in coach with some random Midwestern mom.
As a kid in the nineties, I knew Hootie-mania was a real phenomenon when my 71 year old, one-legged grandmother looked at me and said "I like Hootie and the Blowfish" out of the blue one night. Kids today just won't understand the dissonance of that.
Anyway, Todd, you need to cover DeeDee Ramones' rap album for this series. That is truly a fiasco of epic proportions.
Dee Dee King! Yes
@@bloop945 Don't you mean King DeDeDe? Or Didi Conn?
Didn't One Legged Grandma open for Hootie?
@@davedavid7061 "With a lack of legs, and some tenderness"
OH MY GOD, YES, DEE DEE RAMONE'S RAP ALBUM
Darius Rucker has probably the most dad energy of anyone I've ever seen even though he was apparently right out of college when this band started. I wonder why he didn't just make an entire album of blatant dad rock and call it a day instead of "hurting the population" or whatever
"Why he didnt just make an entire album of dad rock" has he EVER made anything else?
Thank you for this, Todd - Hootie's mainstream success has been weirdly fascinating to me, and i've done a fair amount of my own research into the topic. A few relevant points to add on to the (well done!) video:
1. The guy who signed Hootie to Atlantic Records was inspired by one particular week's Billboard album chart. Specifically, he noticed that right alongside a bunch of grunge records in the top 10 was Bob Seger's Greatest Hits. That told him there was a large chunk of the music-buying public being ignored by grunge, so (though he doesn't exactly put it this way) he thought there would be money in a new band that played dad rock. Hootie had sent their demo to Atlantic, he listened to it, and they became his baby. He actually had to fight a lot of higher-ups at the label to get them a chance, and even then there wasn't a single music video included in their marketing budget.
2. Cracked Rear View's breakout started with a very clever regional sales strategy on the part of the label. They didn't stock the album much if at all in New York or LA, which is typically a huge no-no in the music business. Their plan? "STOCK NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA LIKE IT'S PEARL JAM!", the idea being that Hootie was already known around the bar scene in those states. This gamble netted over 10,000 copies sold the first week in those two states alone, landing them the #1 spot on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. That's what made the label shift gears and arrange music videos for them.
3. The point that seems to get brought up the least, but one that must be mentioned: Wal-Mart. This was the time when the specialty music chains like Coconuts & Sam Goody had begun to show weakness, and Wal-Mart amped up their music-retail focus in an attempt to take their place. Given Wally World's clientele and refusal to carry albums containing the Parental Advisory sticker, Cracked Rear View was an absolutely *perfect* fit for them. They promoted the heck out of that album once it had started to take off, and you know the rest. Creed seems to be the most well-known case of "Wal-Mart Made My Career", but you could argue Hootie was the first.
Again, i don't mean this as a criticism of the video - just a little bonus for the folks who actually read the comments!
joshthefunkdoc this is cool, thanks for sharing!
So you’re telling me Bob “have your son say he’s gay” Seger’s responsible for hootie? Damn
Very insightful. Thanks!
Very clever sales strategy indeed ! Of course, I understand why it may have seemed like a gamble but it was actually pretty sound strategy: focus all of your efforts on a region of the country where the album has a better chance of doing well, so that the label will want to promote the band more.
I can distinctly remember seeing a cardboard piece with many copies of this album sitting on it for people to just randomly buy like they were grabbing a bag of chips and some bean dip. It was a cheap no brainer stocking stuffer for Christmas as well.
I’m from Charleston, South Carolina, where the members of Hootie & The Blowfish call home. They throw annual charity concerts that are huge deals. My sister trick-or-treated at Rucker’s house when we were kids. The street leading into the local arena is named after Rucker. I met Mark Bryan, the lead guitarist for the band, at a concert once. Heck, at one point in the video (around 5:20) Todd uses a picture of Rucker that shows him wearing a shirt for a local venue (the Music Farm) that I went to this past Saturday for a show.
And despite this, even I have not heard a single song from “Fairweather Johnson”. Can’t wait to figure out why.
I'm from Columbia, SC, but went to college in Charleston and it seemed like he was the hottest thing there since hush puppies. Saw him at a river dogs game as well, and the crowd was so excited.
I live a street over from Darius Rucker, and I've met him out and about a few times. He's a nice dude. Really likes supporting the local music scene. The reunion tour is going to be huge here!
TheMightyZ I went to a College of Charleston (go Cougars!) basketball game once where Rucker sang the national anthem and people lost their minds
Miriam Hagood I’ve never met Rucker but everyone I know who has met him has said that he’s a sweetheart, and that makes me happy.
@@uhhhmaeve That's also where I went! I'm class of 2018 though lol.
A video of sell-out era KISS and Tupac F'ing Shakur presenting a Grammy Award to Hootie and the Blowfish is the single most 90s thing I have ever seen. That video clip is more 90s than living through the actual 90s was.
Sell out era KISS is a very broad time frame if we’re being honest.
@@astroknott5263 I mean, they were shameless commercialists (not many bands, to be frank not many PEOPLE/BRANDS, were so willing to risk being called tacky that they got into the "selling novelty COFFINS" game), but the no make-up era probably qualifies, at least musically/brand wise. It's their "why not just follow what's popular now" period.
@@Volvagia1927 I mean, the no-makeup era wouldn't have been the first time they chased a trend. They had a short-lived disco era in 1979.
I think KISS was in their 20th year of their sell-out era at that point
"Sellout era KISS"
Aka Kiss
“Hootie and the Blowfish scientifically pinpointed the exact mathematical center of the road with quantum precision” 😂
Nowadays "Imagine Dragons" seems to have done the same thing by being the perfect radio band that is completely forgettable the moment you turn the radio off.
@@drygnfyreNot really IMO. Imagine Dragons is usually way more annoying.
"I'd like to hurt the population" sounds like something a serial killer writes over and over again in a notebook he keeps his plans in.
Sounds like a tagline for 'HATRED'
We live in a population.
Naw, I don't even think Joker would use lines that lame...
I think a serial killer would rather write "I'd love to murder every single asshole in this place", or "I'd love to put a bullet in the skull of all the idiots around here".
Instead, "I'd love to hurt the population" sounds like the thought of a man who wishes he could be an asshole to vent some steam, but knows he's too wimpy for that... and I *think* that's what the lyrics of the song are going for.
I thought that was just the summary of the Communist Manifesto?
Darius Ruckers shooter manifesto
Even when you're Hootie and the Blowfish, there's only so much Hootie and the Blowfish you can listen to. Truer words were never spoken.
Lmao
Yeah basically 😂
As a black person into rock music for my entire life, my mom always assumed i was totally into Hootie. I had much more refined rock taste like Limp Bizkit, Orgy and Snot.
"Fuck off mum I'm not into crap like Hootie, I'm actually into a different flavour of crap"
Interesting definition of "refined".
@Pentex Sucks when the best of the bunch is called "Snot"
😂😂😂
@@blakchristianbale shush Limp Bizkit is /very/ refined
We're gonna hold you to that Hulk Hogan album review, brother
No don't. Let Hogan's career continue to stay dead instead of paying any attention to him while he's still alive.
I personally am still waiting the Dog Police review.
@@roguishpaladin hogans career will never die lol dumbass comment
@@theitfactorjameswheezer2852 hogans career died when he said all that racist shit. they are dragging his corpse around like weekend at bernies at this point
Add the Joe Pesci rap album to the bit
Imagine if Hootie did a cover of Breakfast at Tiffanys. Middle of the road band plays the most inoffensive bland and middle of the road song.
That's more 1995 than getting a "Rachel" haircut after seeing Clueless while playing Pogs.
That's mega-1995.
@@NJGuy1973 Don't forget making a Braveheart reference
And a sax solo by Kenny g.
What a jagged little pill 😁
@@DerekPower how ironic
They got big because they crossed rock, pop and country all at once. You could hear them on ANY radio station back in the day.
At the time though, their music was dismissed by hipsters as fratboy rock.
@@TMC1982Part2hipsters were right for once
i don’t think they were on the radio stations over here. only time i ever saw or heard them was the american music awards, world music awards, or the grammy’s 🥴
Interesting story, so a while ago after watching this video I asked my mom why Hootie and the Blowfish’s first album went 21x platinum. I would keep bringing it up in conversation how baffling it is they sold that many albums and my mom would laugh at how mad I was about it. Then, I woke up on Christmas morning started unwrapping presents, and I found that my mom bought me a copy of Cracked Rearview on Cd. I now own a copy of Hootie and The Blowfish’s Cracked Rearview, all because of this video. Thanks Todd
I want your Mom as my bff cuz that's hilarious.
It's her way to warn you it's time to GTFO
As someone who used to work at Goodwill, go to flea markets and garage sales, and still frequents used CD stores, I can say with certainly that Cracked Rearview is EVERYWHERE. It is by far the CD that can be found the easiest. Seriously, it's insane how common it is.
fun fact: Jim DeRogatis, who got fired from Rolling Stone for a negative review of their first album, also opened for Wire on a U.S. tour with a cover band that played the first Wire album in its entirety, since Wire themselves were only playing new songs. DeRogatis is also the guy behind a lot of R. Kelly investigations, so a lot of the dirt we know about him was unveiled in some fashion by DeRogatis.
Learning that journalists can be fired for being honest with their reviews made me realize how garbage most magazines and their "reviews" are. It's been that way for a long time, and it's gross. All the more reason to just ignore reviews and make your own conclusions.
actually, he got fired from rolling stone for a negative review of the 2nd album. rolling stone magazine sucks anyways.
That Darius Rucker wink at the beginning is hilarious. I don't think I've ever seen a musician who exudes so much "dad who's so lame it comes back around to being kind of charming" energy.
Having seen his interview with Craig Ferguson, this is a spot-on description
omg todd fan with a rei pfp ur just like me fr!!
"Hoodie was America's band. And then they weren't." Kinda like Train.
OK but some of us still like Hootie and the Blowfish
They were still way better than Train
At least Hootie never sounded like being hit by a board with a nail in it to the ears.
As a South Carolinian I couldn't relate to that line. Around here it's like they never left.
Spot on
2 trainwreckords in a month? Noice
2 trainwrecords back-to-back, no less!
Loving the hell out of this series.
I say Motley Crue's Generation Swine would be a prime candidate. An album that not only killed Crue's cred, but killed Hair Metal along with it.
Can we truly be mad at something that killed something as awful as hair metal.
@@proevofan There were some decent hair metal bands, Motley Crue being one of them.
Wasn't Hair Metal dead before Generation Swine was released?
Motley Crue were long dead when Swine came out. It would be more accurate to cover their self-titled.
Hair Metal was even more dead then the Crue.
FirstHelmetDrop I had their self titled album. It is such a slog to get through
Hey this one wasn’t immediately blocked in America
It was blocked in Australia too
I clicked on the notification earlier and it said the video was private, so I'm assuming he had to edit some stuff
@@Mr__Joe damn copyright bots
That's Godd
It was blocked in europe though
I'm glad they got to re-form and have successes again. Too many bands meet such a bitter and contentious end, and these guys all seem too nice to deserve that type of breakup to the band
When I was a baby, my dad had Fairweather Johnson on CD and would put on Sad Caper to get me to stop crying, and apparently it worked every time. I never would’ve thought this album would be on here.
Guess your dad wanted to hurt the population, but settled on hurting just you
I remember in Ted they make fun of Hootie and the Blowfish when he says "you can sing every 90s song with only vowels" and then sings "Only Wanna Be with You"
Why does the album cover look like it’s inside the house on the American Football album cover?
Hootie goes midwest emo
LOL U AINT WRONG
Hootie and the Football
American Blowfish
Pffft. That house wishes.
Holy shit! I'm not the only person who thought that!
I want Todd to work that spot-on Darius Rucker impression into all of his future videos.
That would be annoying. Spot on? I liked the review but that impression was lame (sorry). I don't think it sounds like Darius Rucker at all. If anything, it's a PARODY, but an imitation...really?
I remember at some point in 2002-03 i saw an ad for a balloon festival in the supermarket..the ad said in huge capitals BALLON FESTIVAL, and in a list of the other attractions in smaller print was Hootie and the Blowfish (right above Food Trucks, IIRC). a real-life Spinal Tap moment i got to witness firsthand
Their tedious live show lent itself well to one of my favorite Onion articles: "(pfunk) Mothership Accidentally Descends On Hootie Concert"
OK, this is hilarious 😂
"Can I make a whole twenty minute video about Hootie and the blowfish without being boring?"
>Looks at video length<
Apparently not.
Estimation, my dear friend
notsae66 here in TITS land we always round up
this video sucked ass. Nobody gives a fuck about Hootie
Conrad Nickelson Meh fuck it
@@alexbonilla2041 GREAT point! 1,000,000th like!
I've heard these guys' music described as "Golf Rock" and it really fits
I was trying to figure out their genre. Dad Rock didnt sound right. Golf Rock fits to a tee
@@RichV20 Lol "to a tee"
I like that you brought up the fct that Hootie had "much less clout in the UK", because as a 38 year old UK resident, I can honestly say, I've never heard a Hootie song until this video! Terrific as always though, Mr In The Shadows.
Hootie was the perfect band at the perfect time. There was a musical vacuum. In 1994 people were tired of the angst, ennui, and pretentiousness. In walks Hootie and the Blowfish like a bloody mary after a long night of drinking. They were our grunge hangover antidote.
Incision 👌
I agree. Timing is everything. I remember Todd did a review of "Groove Is In The Heart" and noted that it being released in 1990 was probably the reason the band never caught on, because the song and album would have worked way better in the late 1990s when anything that sound happy or upbeat got big.
1994 was the year Cobain died and that was pretty much the end of grunge. Most of the radio-friendly stuff was already transitioning to alt-rock, so that year in particular there was a desire for more middle-of-the-road stuff. Thus came Hootie.
1995 was a weird year. Hootie and Alanis filled the vacuum and Oasis captured the UK.
Hootie and the Blowfish played one of my therapist’s frat parties when he was at UNC Chapel Hill and the band was just getting started. He says he walked in on the band doing coke off his MCAT prep textbook.
How is coke a pregame for this kind of music? It should be Guinness or coffee or some sort of dad beverage
@@AnnoyingOrange420aye, DRINKING coke (perhaps with jack daniels or rum as well) seems like it'd make much more sense
I like to imagine Hootie having a phishlike following, seeking out hundreds of shows for that special version of Hold My Hand.
blasphemy!
Hootie and the Blowphish
@@icanusernamebetterthanyou3853 that's awesome...great comment!
😆
There is a huge market for competent but unchallenging music. Just about every performer we "love to hate" is this kind of band. Talented enough to catch attention, vague enough to cross genre and generation barriers; just generally good but kinda boring.
Some bands are so much "this" that they release a second album and everyone goes "I already have this."
Maroon 5 is the most recent example I can think of
Lol, perfect way to put it
I feel like a lot of the "Wal-Mart made my career" bands are like this. Both Creed and Nickelback come to mind: just edgy enough to sound interesting, but none were threatening or particularly deep. But they knew what sold and stuck with it. And indeed, both suffered from "wait, isn't this album the same as the last one?"
More recently, "Imagine Dragons" feels like this. A really well-constructed radio band with a lot of hits, but I could never tell you a thing about them once you turn the radio off. Engineered to make great pop hits, but there is not a thing interesting or memorable about them. Some others mentioned Maroon 5, and I'd agree. Both are kind of cut from the same cloth.
AND THERE'S NOTHIN I CAN DOOOO
WE'RE DEAD BY ALBUM TWOOOOOOOOO
He's not joking at the end there guys. Hulk Hogan actually released a real album of music, look it up.
@ you should be
Castrik NM Kind of figured I should! Talk about a cringey thought.
"Real album of music" is a bit of a stretch, don'tcha think?
@@justinperry2598 fair enough. But I meant "real" as in you can physically listen to it and that's it.
I was falling aslep but the lyric 'I'd love to hurt the population' startled me awake because HUH WHAT.
Also, Tupac, on stage with Kiss, calling Hootie and The Blowfish his boys is so wild to me.
All I can think of is Cuba Gooding Jr saying “I am NOT Hootie!” in Jerry Maguire.
All I can think of is Jordan Peele sobbing "I'm Hootie!" in that one Key & Peele sketch.
Yet ironically, he turned out to be. The man did not have a career after Jerry Maguire...
@@catrachocolo yes he did. His career died after American Gangster
@@josh-oo
Sheer brilliance
ruclips.net/video/FE9PUexeUv0/видео.html
Same.
All this does is make me want to listen to R.E.M. again.
Just Got MONSTER on Vinyl ♡
It made me want to listen to Live.
@@RestrainingHollywood Got it on CD just a few days ago from a trip to a local Goodwill; last time I went I got burned on an empty case (which I thankfully caught before buying), so it was nice to grab one that had the actual disc this time. It having the original metallic orange tray in pristine condition helps too.
I love me some obscure lyrics about Andy Kaufman.
dammit you guys are supposed to listen to Fairweather Johnson!
What I can hear is that they went from R.E.M. light to a second-rate Counting Crows.
REM was also a post punk band and so a more exciting act overall live. These Hootie guys sound to me more like a male version of things like Sheryl Crow
There essentially Country Coldplay
"It's like he's trying to sing without consonants"
Maybe he learned Danish?
Lukas Graham is the Danish Hootie and the Blowfish 😁
@@DerekPower As a Dane I'd say that would be insulting towards Hootie and the Blowfish 😄
@@Khenfu_Cake Fair point 😆
I realize if you sing The Rolling Stones with no consonants, you get Hootie.
Eee aaaoo ee oo iioooe yeee, ii a aaa oe eeaee aa aaeee.
(To the tune of Sympathy for the Devil)
I grew up in SC and still lived there when Hootie got big. They were huge everywhere but in SC they were INSANE. I lived in Clemson, SC though so the Hootie love was dampened a bit. (Hootie is from Columbia, SC home of the Carolina Gamecocks and they were big fans, the gamecocks are the Clemson Tigers’ biggest rival.) I was drug to their concert in Greenville by my friend. They had a mosh pit. I repeat, a mosh pit for a Hootie and the Blowfish show.😳
"Let Her Cry" is still an outstanding track. Fight me.
KenTerminatedbyGoogle Yes, definitely one of the better songs that you can understand what he is saying and has a deep emotional level to it.
Mike Sparks the line “she went in the back to get high. I sat down on the couch and cried” gets me in the feels.
@@kenterminateddq5311 He's not making fun of Darius's voice in general, just on that album and in the accompanying live performances. Based on this clips, I'm with him. I can't understand the words. That's a problem. On the first album, you could understand him. He dipped a little into hunger dunger dang territory with this album and it didn't go well.
I agree. Very well written and perfectly performed. H&tB’s best track without question.
I actually like a lot of Hootie's hits. Not enough to pay money for them (I feel like that goes without saying) but I do think they're pleasant and if one comes on the radio I'll let it play through. It's like hotel lobby music with words: inoffensive, kinda makes you smile if you bother to listen to it, easy to block out if you don't.
"Swear to god I'll cover hulk hogan's album next episode"
The pact is sealed.
add "i'd like to hurt the population" to the list of most insane lyrics ever featured in trainwreckords
I hadn't ever listened to their music. So for the longest time, I thought Hootie and The Blowfish was a psychedelic band from the 60s just based on the name. Not a bar band from the 90s.
Tupac liking Hootie seems as inexplicable as Hendrix being a fan of Mungo Jerry
There’s a quote where Prince says that his favourite music is stuff that he could never make and I imagine that’s a thing a lot of big musicians feel.
Tbf I have a friend who's a noise rock musician and he really likes Smash Mouth and Third Eye Blind
This is an amazing comparison!
Men can have RANGE, sir.
Don't diss Mungo Jerry like that, they were a lot better than the Blowfishes
I had an adopted brother growing up who was in love with Hootie and the Blowfish’s first album, shared it with my mom, she adored them too. My brother was super into dance and house and my mom pretty much only listened to Wings and Elton John at that time, so they really did cross those genre lines, by a long shot. Suddenly, by album two, it was all, “Hootie, who?” As a young child at the time, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two albums. As an adult, I still really can’t. I just happen to know more songs from the first one.
My main experience of this album was one day in the late 90s when my dad remarked he'd seen it for sale at every garage sale we'd visited that morning.
I frequently return to this video for Todd's Darius impression alone. Primo stuff.
This reminds me of Asia's career track. They went from the biggest, best-selling album of 1982 to almost insignificant in a year. Granted, Alpha sold well, but it's not well-remembered, it went platinum but it didn't sell 10 million or dominate the album and song charts. And there wasn't any new sonic direction there, either; Alpha was pretty much the same prog-flavored arena rock that made the debut such a smash. Yes, that stuff did go out of style, but not in 1983, when pretty much all the old prog bands were folding into the Big 80s with records like 90125, Genesis' self-titled album, Broadsword and the Beast, Signals...so why didn't Asia share in that success?
Probably because 1, it was a crowded freaking market, as you can see up there. Then you add people like Journey to the mix, who were making very similar records, and Asia would totally get lost in the shuffle, to say nothing of all the crazy synthpop and new wave acts that ruled the scene in 1983. 2, the album wasn't nearly as good. Despite their chops, Asia were never as elaborate as King Crimson, ELP, or Yes--where all the members came from--but they had a good bit of punch to their sound, and on Alpha, that just isn't there. It starts to sound more like The Buggles without the quirkiness. And 3, the band was in near-meltdown mode. For disputed reasons, John Wetton left a few months after Alpha's release, forcing the tour's cancellation and resulting in Greg Lake filling in for him at the Asia in Asia concert in Tokyo, which Lake only did as a favor because he didn't like Asia's musical direction. Wetton eventually returned, but only on the condition that Steve Howe was fired. The guitar legend was replaced by a decent, but rather unknown Mandy Meyer for 1985's Astra, which did even worse than Alpha and resulted in the band's break-up.
It's very similar to what happened here with Hootie and the Blowfish, because the 90s was full of mush like this that created the Adult Alternative label, which much like late 70s early 80s AOR, blew itself out and now mostly rests on its legacy. Cracked Rear View has songs you can pick out from one another, much like Asia; Fairweather Johnson, much like Alpha, sounds like a lot of the same thing with rule-proving exceptions.
"Ok fine, I will return, but only if this guy left the band."
*Points to one of the best guitarists in rock history*
As someone who lived in South Carolina right when Hootie blew up, Hootie and the Blowfish were the bane of my 6th and 7th grade years. I was really getting into music during this time and I heard them on the radio at least 4 times a day.
WMG doesn’t give a Hootie about the RUclips video reviewer.
Todd, I just want you to know that the fact I'm willing to sit through nineteen solid minutes of Hootie and the Blowfish music says a lot about how much I enjoy your work.
All of Hootie and The Blowfish's music videos look like travel ads or Pass It On PSAs
Don’t worry! Any video where Todd does parody singing or vocal imitations is instantly not boring !
I always tell people that mediocre adult alternative radio rock, like Counting Crows and Hootie and the Blowfish, is my jam. I was so excited for this reupload.
I"m pretty sure HATBF were noone's favorite band - but they were "good enough" that everyone thought they were ok and ended up selling a ton of records. Kind of reminds me of The Spin Doctors (who were a less successful version of this phenomena)
Man is there a video for you.
"can I make a 20 minute video about Hootie and The Blow-fish's second album entertaining"
video run-time 19:18
well I guess he failed
@Tee Wew28 - Only 30 seconds or above rounds up to the next minute.
2:00 Todd is NOT kidding about how big Hootiemania was. I started listening to modern pop music around early 1995, and Hootie was EVERYWHERE. Cracked Rear View was one of the first half-dozen CDs I ever owned, so I was that 1 in 27 Americans that bought it. I bought both the "Old Man and Me" single CD AND Fairweather Johnson.
I don't know why that second album didn't take off. I think it was just more of the same 2 years after they launched. But my theory is that the explosion of home computing -- and more importantly, the Internet -- caused us to finally be able to explore a wider pool of music in a VERY short amount of time. What's more, we could share opinions about it on chat rooms and message boards. We may not have had RUclips or even Napster, but the ingredients of file sharing were there. Websites soon popped up that shipped music worldwide, even before Amazon came to devour them all. That's half the reason you can have 2Pac, Elton John, OMC, Oasis and Jamiroquai on the same chart (to say nothing of bands like The Butthole Surfers, Nada Surf and Squirrel Nut Zippers).
Hootie was the quintessential American band, but Americans in some sense wanted something international and/or unconventional.
Not to mention, other bands or artists like Duncan Shiek or The Wallflowers clamoring to become the next Hootie.
I think they released this album too soon. The song Time was in the top 20 a few months before this was released. Rearview hadn't run it's course yet. If memory serves, Rearview actually finished in the top 10 best sellers of the year in 96, which is insane to think about. They really should've put this out in 97 or so and i think that's why there was such a backlash against them. They were too big and overexposed. There wasn't a break to allow people to have a time out from them. Another factor here is the lack of singles. It wasn't was poppy, or accessible as Rearview was. Great first single, but it didn't have the potential third or fourth hit single, let alone a second one even.
1995 was such an interesting year in pop culture. Not only was Hootiemania a thing, but so was Windowsmania. Windows 95 might rival Hootie for the amount of sales and hype that was generated that year. So you had major shifts not just in music but in how information was spread and dissected. The Internet was becoming a household commodity around this time. I have no idea if any of this benefitted Hootie, but I think it's just such an interesting point in time. There was such huge shifts in how the world was working by then.
I feel like the 90s more than any other decade had such a sharp contrast in the earlier and latter halves. The decade started with pop rap and grunge, then it ended with bands like Hootie and then Swedish Europop and Latin funk revivals. I think Hootie lost popularity just because of how fast everything was moving in the 90s, especially once the Internet became commonplace.
Hootie and the Blowfish were famous enough that they served as a plot point of a season 2 episode of Friends that drew 28 million viewers in 1995. There was even a successful Friends soundtrack album released that year that opened with a Hootie and the Blowfish song.
"he sad because of racism and or a breakup" LMAO
Todd: "Hootie & The Blowfish is the stupidest band name"
Death Cab For Cutie: "Hold my beer"
Big Head Todd and The Monsters
Don't Forget: Toad The Wet Sprocket
At least Death Cab for Cutie is a reference to another contender for the worst band name ever: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Had anyone ever heard of Hoobastank?
Petrol Bastard, Soul Coughing, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Sheep On Drugs... I could go on.
As a person who spent a lot of my child hood in Bermuda because my dad is from there- I literally had never heard of the Hooties song about Tuckers Point. Which really gives me an idea of how little people cared
4:45 How would a Tupac & Kiss colab album sound like?
You know it’s bad when the award presenters are more memorable than the award recipient.
Doclank 3D What about a Tupac & Kiss collab album with a guest appearance by Darius Rucker???? 😂😂😂😂😂
California Love Gun?
@Pino Petit - Amateur in Spirit and also he's dead
@@JamesOhGoodie That's subjective though. Just because people don't remember who won doesn't mean that the band is bad.
Hootie & The Blowfish has to be the most specific American band Todd has ever talked about. I have never heard any of their songs outside his videos and it seems nobody outside the US knows about them.
They were slightly successful in my home country of Australia, as Cracked Rear View peaked in the Top 10 ARIA album charts and "Let Her Cry" was a Top 5 hit.
Fairweather "Johnson" is a reference to Blazing Saddles, where everyone in Rock Ridge was named Johnson.
"Imagine the Zero Punctuation guy writing that."
Holy shit Yahtzee totally would. Except there'd be more swear words involved and he'd be talking about another Call of Duty game. Actually now that I think about it, that would've been early ZP, not today's ZP.
I'm overthinking this, I know.
You know, when you're ACTUALLY first, you kinda understand how people who comment "first" feel? Like...it feels good and like something you wanna brag about! Still, I'll manage to resist.
...Wait this doesn't count, ri
I once tried to buy their first album at a thrift store but ended up with a copy of Fairweather Johnson with a chunk missing out of the CD...
As someone who buys CD's at thrifts just to download them I relate. I think the worst thing I've come across is the spine/back cover of "Bizzare ride II the Pharcyde" (which my local CD store only has an ultra expensive brand new double CD I don't want) my heart SKIPPED A BEAT over it, but then I pulled it out only to find the front cover/disc was "sounds of the ocean or some shit". OMFG I was pissed.
I also was about to re-buy Avril Lavigne's let go but the actual CD inside was her far inferior third album "best damn thing". lol. Thankfully they had THREE cases of what I actually wanted.
Sounds like you dodged a bullet
@@gamerguy425 yeah I've gotten my hopes up for nothing quite a few times while thrifting
Either way you were getting ripped off.
@@TercelRepairManual it was only 14 cents
They were in that weird 90s genre that was, like, part world music, part jam band, part adult contemporary and part heartland rock
Dave Matthews Band, rusted root, Shawn Mullins etc
Todd imitating the singing had me crying from laughter.
Can't believe i'm not the only one who don't get how insane the sucsess Hootie and the blowfish is.
Bought this one from a bargain bin and was still disappointed.
Thanks, Todd!
Their more “mature” sound included “she crawls away”, which is a creepy title, and is about Darius’s baby girl.
This took me out
My dad was the Programming Director at his college’s radio station in the early 90s, and he got offered tickets and backstage access to this little band that was coming through town. He turned it down because “who the fuck is ever going to care about a band called Hootie and the Blowfish?”
It’s fitting that a band as unremarkable as Hootie and the Blowfish couldn’t even fail remarkably.
I never realized before that Hootie & The Blowfish were the radio-friendly version of Pearl Jam
Then again, as you mentioned, they were not big in Europe, and I honestly thought they were a one-hit wonder with that "I Only Wanna Be With You" song for the longest time, so :P
It's amazing to hear how one album was great and the other was awful, while both sounding exactly as lame.
i would love to see a video on cold lake by celtic frost. It's a really interesting album. Celtic frost torched all of their scene cred by going glam and the resulting album is really unique from a 2021 point of view.
Even CF have disavowed it.
Hootie , Alannis morrisette , and the wallflowers
The definite artists who had the one album then nothing worth talking about
ALANNIS!!!!!???? Dude wtf
Y’all dont understand how absolutely garbage Alannis is, and how unbearable her terrible voice is
Boston?
Replace alannis with radiohead
@@Jumpscare_Da_Piggy uh what? Every Radiohead album after Pablo Honey has been acclaimed and generally popular and have 4 albums that can be considered among the best albums ever recorded, The Bends, OKC, Kid A and In Rainbows, how in the world would they be a one album wonder??
Idea for Trainwreckords.
Yes Please! - Happy Mondays. A album made on crack in Barbados at Eddy Grant's house. That destroyed a band, a record label, a nightclub (ultimately), and a genre (Madchester).
Probably too british for Todd´s taste but I would love seeing that.
@@EclecticoIconoclasta He said that he's had a lot of influence from British rock music critics ;)
Master tapes used as means of extorting more money. And in the end, there were zero vocals.
Mindfuckery indeed
Gotta throw my vote in for Motely Crue's self-titled album with John Corabi. To go from arguably the 2nd biggest band on Earth (behind GNR) to a forgettable fart in the wind in the span of one record is hard to do. But they did it.
I used to flip through music mags at places like Waldenbooks and it was obvious that stuff like Kerrang and Hit Parader didn't have a clue what to do with this grunge stuff, and when the 1994 album was going to be released, they acted like it was the second coming of Jesus ("There's a whole generation of kids who have never seen the Crue! This album is going to be massive!!!!!")
Funny how that didn't happen...
REM were really huge in Europe and specially in Spain. Sold out tours.
Kinda funny when you consider that they spent most of the 80's relatively ignored east of the Atlantic in favor of the Smiths. Granted, much of it has to do with the fact that I.R.S. Records did a piss-poor job distributing their material; the switch to Warner Bros. in 1988 was what ultimately changed that AFAIK.
@@VinchVolt I remember Out of Time, Monster and Automatic for the People. These three albums had one best single after the other. I remember they were everywhere. As I said, they were huge. This was the beginning of the 90´s. And then, they kinda fell off my radar. From being everywhere they were rarely heard of. I remember they song What´s the Frequency Kenneth, a song I never liked. It was heard on the radio a lot, but not as much as their previous singles. And then they kinda disappeared.
I was just reminded that there was an episode of the '90s TGIF sitcom Step by Step called "Forever Young", where Suzanne Somers' character Carol, informs her "fuddy duddy" of a husband, Frank (played by Patrick Duffy) that Hootie and the Blowfish just so happen to be the "biggest, hippest rock band in the country". And this is from February 1996, mind you, less than two months before the release of Fairweather Johnson.
“The Old Man & Me” was originally released on their debut EP, Kootchypop which also contained “Hold My Hand” & “Only Wanna Be with You.” So Old Man is essentially a rejected outtake from Cracked Rear View.
I honestly forgot that song wasn’t on CRV
I was in a bar recently, and I heard Old Man and Me end off a rock block that I got started on the jukebox. Listing to it full can perfectly sum up Hootie and the Blowfish. Decent background music about a good discussion point. Yet, it will never really be raised above that. Because, in a bar that sang along to Live Forever by Oasis, this place basically shrugged and said, "Oh yeah, that exists" in bar language. And I can't really blame them.
Hootie is background music while you watch SportsCenter rerun. It never excited me. "Live Forever" 25 years later still gives me goosebumps hearing it. Would you rather be the biggest US band in 1995 or do you want to LIVE Forever, long after you've left the Earth?