Now That Was Totally On The Radio and Stuff! Vol. 2: Forgotten Singles of the Early 2000s

A few lead/early singles that were forgotten after the "Big Hit" was released:

Uncle Kracker, when he was modelling himself after Kid Rock's rap-rock side as opposed to his southern rock/country side:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsOXkkhkOyI

The lead single from Counting Crows' Hard Candy, the album which featured their hit cover of "Big Yellow Taxi" initally as a bonus track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsOXkkhkOyI

Whoops, messed up that second link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ_MUfryl-w

And speaking of Kid Rock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFT0JqOL58A

I'm still refraining from posting a bunch of Can-Con few care about, but decided to post this one as one of those early 2000s examples of group writing a song about that new fangled thing called "The Internet":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIZFS3SC_UE

Also, Prozzak's existence was mostly forgotten a year or two later when Gorillaz came along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3YmPNcxhZ0

Jurassic 5 - The Influence. Did not chart, but I always liked it a lot more than "Quality Control." Cool sample, great forward momentum, and I like how they keep handing the mic around, but the title doesn't show up til the very last couplet.

Oh man, I didn't recognize the title to "Forever" but oh man, the stupid chorus, that stupid, stupid chorus. I take SOME-THING! and mix it with SOME-THING! It's basically an inferior "American Bad-Ass"... not a good place to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LofXZ0j3XtI

Andrew WK - We Want Fun. An I Get Wet castoff picked up for the Jackass: The Movie soundtrack. In the context of AWK's career, it felt like a misstep, pinning down his broad, exciting vision of "the party" to something banal and fratty. His subsequent releases would swerve into a self-help vision in which partying is more like a metaphor for the path to enlightenment, so this really doesn't fit in. That only leaves the delightfully dumb title and the joyous trucker key change at the end.

Don't remember that Uncle Kracker song at all, but OTM about Kid Rock - I would have totally believed that was a Kid Rock song with a guest vocalist singing the hook.

a couple others that were on the radio and are not remembered by many nowadays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvf4ctqTrro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYQt11Mfb4w

I remember when Lady Gaga released "Edge of Glory", I kept thinking it reminded me of this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3qyTaLe5BE

That is impressive recall - and pretty accurate

I'm not sure if this song is quite forgotten since I remember still hearing this song at my local supermarket in 2005/2006, but that was also close to ten years ago (yikes!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhjHICy5tW0

I like that one :)

Oh my forgot about Sarina Paris such an annoying but catchy song.

i always thought 'we want fun' was great

/fratty

Wow, totally forgot about "You're An Ocean," and not sure I even knew it was Fastball at the time. Came and went very quickly. I guess it's okay? I have no real beef with Fastball but they don't do enough with the lift from "Rock The Boat" to make it much other than a lift. Kind of a weird arrangement/tempo; it definitely doesn't sound like much on the radio at that time so I'll give them that.

At last, a Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/doctorcasino/playlist/682AFwRyNlwUxoGEZYiEGH

(Late '90s one is still here: https://open.spotify.com/user/doctorcasino/playlist/2taIeJ0IhYbdEJWgGXJBsK)

Not on Spotify:

Mil - Ride Out
True Steppers - Out Of Your Mind
Jelleestone - Money Can't Buy Me Happiness
Jive Jones - Me Myself and I
Moxy - Mz. Popularity
One Ton - Supersex World
Outkast - Land of a Million Drums
Little T etc. - Shaniqua
Eden's Crush - Get Over Yourself
Jupiter Day - Empty Space
Eskobar - Someone New
D-12 - Purple Pills
D-12 - Fight music
Custom - Hey Mister (pretty okay with not having to hear this btw)
Schuyler Fisk - It's Not Her
Jimmie's Chicken Shack - Falling Out
Krystal Harris - Supergirl
Prozzak - www.nevergetoveryou

I think some of these get burned by being on movie soundtracks with presumably thorny rights arrangements... "Land of a Million Drums," by the way, is available on a horrrrrrrible Outkast "tribute" album by someone called the Urban Underground Society, worth skimming through because their spree of soundalikes features a number of completely flubbed lyrics apparently derived from a quick quasi-phonetic transcription of the song. "Ms. Jackson, my intentions were good, I wish I could / become a magician to abracadabra off the Seder."

I left in most contested entries, though they may be a bit jarring - Fuel in particular are a couple leagues above the rest of these in terms of Spotify plays with 8 mil versus 300K for something like Rehab, even less for Busta's duds. Stacie Orrico, who I've never heard of before, might be the other breakout star here with nigh 3 million plays. Oh, and Green Day is right around that point too. I went ahead and threw in their "Waiting" since it's got less plays than "Warning" and is plausibly more forgotten. However, I made a special exception for Eamon - at 18 million Spotify plays, that's verifiably an enduringly remembered, perhaps even popular song. Korn's "Word Up!" is even higher at 20 mil. Obviously some of this could just be an artist's cult spinning their lesser-known tracks ad infinitum, which is the only explanation I can see for 13 million plays on "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" (which I did include after realizing it wasn't even the song I was thinking of upthread with the bad video - that was their curious cover of "Along Comes Mary"). I left in Ashanti, Blaque and City High all - considerably less-played than Fuel. But this is an inexact science. If anyone wants to make a case for re-including anything I cut, I'm open!

Not identified: that "ohohohoh" zombie 5000 whatever it was called... Is this a Powerman 5000 reference?

Meanwhile, finally checking out some of the songs I passed over as Youtube embeds. Hoku - "How Do I Feel" has a certain low-budget "off-brand recording studio trying for the big sound" feel but I can imagine it being a bigger hit with more money in it, it's not totally generic, and the burrito line is smartly placed for adding a memorable quirk early in the song. God the production just piles up silly things as it goes though. They were tryin'!

Peter Searcy meanwhile is kind of amazing for how much he wants the first two seconds to sound like "Semi-Charmed Life."

that "ohohohoh" zombie 5000 whatever it was called..

Zombie Nation - Kernkraft 400
And I would definitely not consider that one forgotten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byoCjcJwoO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ2t4jfVTiU

Alien Ant Farm - Movies - the followup to "Smooth Criminal," with an inevitable "they get dressed up like it's different movies" video, though somebody clearly forgot to order enough costumes for a three-minute song (or they spent the money on Pat Morita's appearance). Amazingly, this had three videos, tracking the band's rising stardom (?).

The chorus is fine but you can see why someone figured the most commercial thing on this album was the obligatory gag "we cover a pop song" track. If it wasn't for the lead guy's dumb face I'd probably regard this band more fondly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34u_3Z9_LUw

Ben Folds - Rockin' The Suburbs - his first "solo" outing from his first "solo" record, of the same title. A pleasantly insubstantial ditty wasted on a string of mostly-unfunny jokes. Weird Al directs, amidst a late-career slump pre-White & Nerdy, which he seems to have spent learning how to use blue screens and a video toaster. Nobody's best work but it used to get stuck in my head a lot, with different rockers inserted in the chorus ("Just like Calvin Johnson did..."). Meanwhile: A remake of the title track featuring William Shatner appeared in the soundtrack for the 2006 film Over the Hedge, which stars Shatner as an opossum named Ozzie.

That Ben Folds song for sure qualifies as a forgotten single for the public at large, but I gotta say his first solo album was really beloved among a certain set of the collegiate crowd. FWIW that record is probably responsible for him not being forgotten after his success in the 90s.

Wow, really? That kinda shocks me; I would have believed that Reinhold Messner and Fear of Pop were cred-enhancing with the cult (I still like "Army," or most of it) but "Rockin' The Suburbs" seems so... lame and dorky. I guess that's not necessarily a negative with certain sets of the collegiate crowd but I'll take anything on Whatever and Ever, Amen first. Or Moxy Fruvous.

I absolutely loved the song Rockin' the Suburbs when it came out, but that was mostly due to me being a dorky high school kid that disliked most of the Nu-metal and rap-rock of the time.

xp I mean, it may depend the college, but I heard it a lot on my campus. I was a sophomore when it came out, and the coworkers at my school job played the hell out of it. It was popular enough that he released a live record a year later, which I also got to hear regularly.

He also toured the hell out of it, then grabbed steady soundtrack work afterward. And his next two records debuted in the top 15, at which point he was the type of established "cult" artist who could make a record with Nick Hornby. Not exactly a superstar, but also not suffering the fate of the guys from Eve6 or Alien Ant Farm.

As far as "certain sets of the collegiate crowd", I'll say that I think his was a pretty canny move to align himself with college a cappella groups later that decade.

I love that Ben Folds album, the title track is the worst thing on it by some distance though, the nadir of his tendency for grating clever-clever smugness

it feels kinds of lyrically lazy, like he doesn't really make any attempt to get inside the head of this character he's portraying in the way that Randy Newman or someone might (I would have liked to hear a Randy Newman song from the pov of a teenage nu-metal fan on Badlove, thinking about it) - which isn't to say that it needs to be a *sympathetic* portrayal, just something more than 'get a load of this idiot'

xp I mean, it may depend the college, but I heard it a lot on my campus. I was a sophomore when it came out, and the coworkers at my school job played the hell out of it.

Naw, it makes sense, just didn't occur to me. The kids I knew were much more Radiohead or Captain Beefheart types and we were all well into our indie rock plunges by that point also. I'd have probably been much more interested in Folds a couple years earlier; I was a nerdy high school kid who did own Whatever and Ever (more for "Battle of Who Could Care Less" and "Song For the Dumped" than "Brick").

but i agree with soref, "Rockin' The Suburbs" would be better and funnier if more specific. Doesn't even have to be that he 'gets' his character more, just like, work some more detail into your nu-metal comedy routine. The involvement of Weird Al is interesting in that it really does feel like one of his lesser efforts (or those of his imitators), where the concept is there but the jokes are generally first-draft.

yeah, the little details are what make something like 'Battle of Who Could Care Less' work, like the Rockford Files reference or the old ID when they were in their goth phase. (I was working on the assumption that the Rockford Files thing is just on the basis that it's the kind of slightly kitschy old TV show that the slacker protagonist might be into in a quasi-ironic/poseurish was, unless it's something more specific than that?)

(and that it's the kind of undemanding thing that would be repeated on daytime tv as well, obv)

haha, for years, because of that lyric, i assumed Rockford Files had to be a Quantum-Leap-like gimmicky show about a guy who could go back and change some things about his past.

in reality i think the lyric works better on the second use ("watch the Rockford Files, call to see if Paul can score some weed"). the first part almost sounds like he's talking (this is an anachronism of course) about somebody's online dating profile or something. i guess maybe it could be about someone defining themselves very sketchily by a set of vague but kinda cool/slacker 'interests,' even while they know their life is kind of schlubby and going nowhere ("but there are some things...").

Above posts otm. "Battle of Who Could Care Less" is an actual character sketch with some funny details, not a Weird Al song minus jokes like Folds' other zany tracks. I bought Whatever and Ever Amen in HS on the strength of it, and still have a warm place in my heart for the track. That song also doesn't contain Folds' favorite crutch: the self-evident hilarity of cursing.

Don't think it's been been mentioned yet, but by far the worst part of "Rocking the Suburbs" is the bridge where he starts singing about slavery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv4NBOWhw9A

I imagine she would prefer that one stay forgotten - those synths...

What's up with her attitude in the vid compared to the lyrics - is she being funny or melancholy?

This is one of those Canadian songs that seems instantly recognizable to me, as if I've heard it a ton of times, but I'm not sure if it's because it got a lot radio play here in Canada, or if it's a shameless knockoff of a more popular song that I just can't quite identify:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVVrwGw4fOo

But I'm pretty sure I don't remember seeing the video for it very often, because that thing is terrible.

I love how the video stuck with the singer's-image-projected-onto-a-female-torso premise for the entire 3.5 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYmkJXIdLvg

Pearl Jam - Nothing As It Seems. Got to #3 on Modern rock, and Wikipedia boldly asserts "It is often said that this song is one of the best ever," but I've been mocked on ILX for rating it as high as "decent," and I'd argue that "forgotten" is a fair description of its airplay status today. As a 5:22 exercise in acoustic strumming and atmospheric guitar washes it was probably never going to be a smash, but by spring of 2000, up against Blink-182 and Limp Bizkit, this couldn't have been less in step with the direction of rock radio. The song itself probably doesn't have quite enough meat to justify its big inchoate ~moods~ but, only not quite enough. I rate it... decent.

"BareNaked" has an okay chorus, but overall a very blah song, nothing really coming alive in the mix, and at 3:42 a bit long for this kind of slight nugget of a song. Basically sounds exactly like what you'd expect - studio people hammering a track together and the star coming in to sing over top of it. The video really cements that by having her performing with the "band" somehow looking as much as possible like karaoke, with the band members generally motionless and profoundly out of focus.

The D-Cru cut has shades of "Truly Madly Deeply" in the verse and the chorus sounds like, kind of a million things I think. lol at the torso video. It really just... keeps going with that. Makes "Fever For The Flava's" body-projection gimmick look downright sophisticated.

btw in case you missed the video above, i refer to this delightful character

http://images2.mtv.com/uri/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:20348?width=657&height=370&crop=true&quality=0.85

i hear that pearl jam pretty often on any non classic rock station i'm likely to hear pearl jam on

yeah i don't think anything in pearl jam discography has been forgotten.

i've tried

mm y'all may be right... i was going to say "well sure but if any pearl jam DOES qualify as forgotten, it's that, right? but they DO have more forgotten songs... nonetheless i think it's in the lower tier of their 2000s output.. just going on spotify plays ("nothing as it seems" sits at 1.133 mil), the following 2000s singles beat it: "the fixer" (6.54 mil), "amongst the waves" (2.92) "i am mine" (2.6), "man of the hour" (2.06), "life wasted" (1.60), "world wide suicide" (1.55), and "light years" (barely, with 1.25). oh and something called "just breathe" at 24 million - beating "jeremy" (22) to come in third in their catalog after "even flow" (28.5) and "alive" (34.2). even allowing for maybe some gaps in time for adding stuff to spotify that seems bonkers to me.

anyway so those all beat "nothing as it seems" and i couldn't sing most of them with a gun to my head. ("the fixer" is a jam though.) that still leaves more-forgotten tunes like the laughably-titled "love boat captain" and "bu$hleaguer" though.

I think "Just Breathe" wasn't released until the Ten reissue. That's a lot of spins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnClm_LZ0D4

Method Man & Busta Rhymes - What's Happenin' - A fine little two-man cut, suggestive of the energy of Meth's earlier collabos with Redman, kept going by very thorough sampling from Asha Bhosle (!)'s "Dum Maro Dum." Heard the original at the bar the other night and was immediately struck by that nagging "wait, where...." feeling. Very certain Method Man has more obscure singles, but I always thought this could have been bigger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPN88D_HjMU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2GEoTO0igI

Probably not the right place for this, but - "Ich Kenne Nichts" by Xavier Naidoo feat. the RZA, a #1 hit in Germany for the schmaltzy, spiritual balladeer, utterly unknown in the US for pretty obvious reasons. I really like the dinkiness of RZA's production, which highlights that super-fakey Yamaha keyboard "distortion guitar" sound to good effect on the chorus; reminds me somehow of Alicia Keys's later "No One."

The top video is the German hit version; the second is the English-language one, which I don't think was a hit anywhere. It's notable for RZA's endearingly goofy verse (which the video actually depicts him phoning in):

Ayo shorty, I never met someone so beautiful
From your hair follicle to your fingernail cuticle
Struck by the arrow of Cupid, this love is deep-rooted
Like someone took my heart, sampled it and looped it

German soul. Never heard a track like that before.

I am now reminded of the time when Icelandic Rap Rock group Quarashi tried to make it in America:
[YouTube monN9Ok0El8]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monN9Ok0El8