The southern rock sound was about to be absorbed wholeheartedly into the Nashville Country ethos, where it makes a lot of money to this day. Hip hop/R&B was about to make a huge resurgence into pop culture. That Sister Hazel scored roughly one year later is not shocking if you think about it, as the coattails were not totally threadbare yet, and that they went right out that same door on those perceived coattails is also not shocking. Yet the zeitgeist had moved on, and it would be diminishing returns from there on out. It went 3x platinum, which was a far cry from Cracked Rear View‘s 16x but still darned successful. By the time of their next record, 1996’s Fairweather Johnson, America was nearly Hootied out. To this day, I know people who like the song much better than I did who still call it “Hard To Say.” I think a lot of people did, and they thought it was Hootie. There is no call-to-action in the song, nothing that grabs you and says ‘you have to hear more of this!’ And while it doesn’t commit the major sin of ’90s rock, of having a song title that has zero relationship to the song lyrics, it comes dangerously close. “All For You” fills your ears up, doesn’t compel you to change the channel, but at the same time doesn’t compel you to do much of anything. You sit there and stare at it for a little while, but it will always be a tank full of goldfish, until they all start floating at the top. ![]() That was the song radio glommed on to, and it seemed that this very talented singer was going to go down that same one-hit rabbit hole as so many had…as Sister Hazel did.īut “Chasing Pavements” is a better song than “All For You,” not that “All For You” is terrible. When she released the album 19, I recall a radio show played the song “Chasing Pavements” not once but twice. They suffered a fate I feared would happen to Adele more than a decade later. If they went on TV, it was “All For You.” If they were associated in a commercial of any kind, the song was “All For You.” Force-feeding is a cruel practice, and it seemed like Sister Hazel’s handlers had no intention other than to milk this one track until the utters fell off. When their songs were played it was either the electric “All For You” or the acoustic “All For You,” both sounding so indistinct that there really was no point in wasting the mixer’s time and money to do it. It became their hit song in a textbook case of one-hit wonderdom. In 1997, the song was re-recorded for their second album …Somewhere More Familiar. Sister Hazel were plucked from the indies and landed on Universal. As immediate contemporaries of Hootie that might be expected since they were taking all the leftover oxygen out of the room, but labels were keen to get that Hootie sound for themselves. ![]() ![]() Jump back to 1994 and the southern rock/acoustic-tinged folk band Sister Hazel releases their independently released eponymous debut featuring a track called “All For You” and not much happens. ![]() Some succeeded but were rightly judged as Hootie Wannabes (and to think there was such a thing from this point in time is astounding). Marinate in that a while.Īs you can guess, plenty of people saw those long, flowing coattails and wanted to jump right on them. How massive? It is the sixteenth top-selling album in the United States of all time. It was, on the surface, a deft melding of southern rock and acoustic-tinged folk rock with occasional bursts not unlike those one would find from Pearl Jam (“Daughter”, “Better Man”, “Elderly Woman…”) or Stone Temple Pilots (“Interstate Love Song”). Hootie and the Blowfish released their album Cracked Rear View. No, it was not done by Hootie, but was probably done in by Hootie. Yes, that song is, in fact, called “All For You” and was released in the ’90s in a vaguely acoustic and vaguely electric version. Still nothing? Maybe you think it is called “Hard To Say” and it is done by Hootie and the Blowfish? Ah, I got your attention. Having one trend go up on you is bad enough.
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