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'''Todd:''' Or, here's one: "Can I make a whole 20-minute video about ''[album cover for ''Fairweather Johnson''] ''Hootie & the Blowfish's second album and make it interesting?" It's a tough assignment. I can't promise you I'm going to succeed. <blockquote>''Clip of VH1 performance''</blockquote>'''Todd (VO): '''I guess I wanted to do this just 'cause of one thing, which is the only reason this album qualifies for this show. I'm just fascinated by the sheer depth of the plunge.
 
'''Todd:''' Or, here's one: "Can I make a whole 20-minute video about ''[album cover for ''Fairweather Johnson''] ''Hootie & the Blowfish's second album and make it interesting?" It's a tough assignment. I can't promise you I'm going to succeed. <blockquote>''Clip of VH1 performance''</blockquote>'''Todd (VO): '''I guess I wanted to do this just 'cause of one thing, which is the only reason this album qualifies for this show. I'm just fascinated by the sheer depth of the plunge.
   
'''Todd:''' When you take a cracked rear view back into Hootie-mania, it does not make a whole lot of sense. <blockquote>''Clip of 2Pac and Kiss presenting the award for Best New Artist at the 1996 Grammy Awards''</blockquote><blockquote>'''2Pac: '''And the Grammy goes to...''[arrow points at 2Pac with text: "Tpuac F-ing Shakur] ''Oh my, my homeboys! Hootie & the Blowfish!</blockquote>''Todd can do nothing but throw his hands up in bewilderment''
+
'''Todd:''' When you take a cracked rear view back into Hootie-mania, it does not make a whole lot of sense. <blockquote>''Clip of 2Pac and Kiss presenting the award for Best New Artist at the 1996 Grammy Awards''</blockquote><blockquote>'''2Pac: '''And the Grammy goes to...''[arrow points at 2Pac with text: "Tupac F-ing Shakur] ''Oh my, my homeboys! Hootie & the Blowfish!</blockquote>''Todd can do nothing but throw his hands up in bewilderment''
   
 
'''Todd (VO): '''And then, basically immediately following this Grammy ceremony, they vanished from the face of the earth! How could they have turned out to be such a flash in the pan, when they had so little flash?!
 
'''Todd (VO): '''And then, basically immediately following this Grammy ceremony, they vanished from the face of the earth! How could they have turned out to be such a flash in the pan, when they had so little flash?!

Revision as of 01:00, 25 November 2019

Fairweather Johnson

Fairweather johnson todd in shadows

Date Aired
November 19, 2019
Running Time
19:18
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Todd: I... haven't really thought very hard about what qualifies for this show, but I get questions sometimes so I wanna be real clear about this: not every unsuccessful album is a Trainwreckord. Um, for example, Cyndi Lauper.

Video for Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"

Todd (VO): First Cyndi Lauper album, huge. [brief clips of Cyndi Lauper - "True Colors"...] Second one, wasn't really as good and didn't do quite as well; and [..."I Drove All Night"...] then the third album did kinda bad and...[and Cyndi Lauper & Alan Cumming performing "Pimp's Ballad" at the 2006 Tony Awards] she kinda goes away after that and she shifts her work to other media. Todd: That's... normal. That's a perfectly typical arc for a pop star. [graphic of declining graph] All careers end. And except for an elite few, no one finishes theirs on top. The name of the show is [shot of Trainwreckords logo] Trainwreckords. I'm looking for truly colossal disasters. It's gotta be something a little more noteworthy than just any old album that doesn't sell. But we're gonna make an exception today.

Audio for Hootie & the Blowfish - "Only Wanna Be with You" plays over concert footage

Todd (VO): If there is any band on Earth who shouldn't be on a show about spectacular failures, it is Hootie & the Blowfish. Todd: 'Cause they weren't a spectacular anything.

Clip of Hootie & the Blowfish - "Hold My Hand"

Darius Rucker: With a little love

And some tenderness

Todd (VO): One of the least pretentious and, let's be honest, least ambitious rock bands of the '90s, Hootie & the Blowfish's sound was so middle-of-the-road, it was like they'd scientifically pinpointed the exact [image of geometric diagram of...] mathematical center of the road with quantum precision. Todd: And it's weird 'cause on paper, they had a number of distinguishing characteristics.

Video for Hootie & the Blowfish - "Let Her Cry"

Todd (VO): Like their many hit singles, their frontman's distinct and sometimes overwrought vocals, the very fact of having a black singer in a lily-white genre, and just one of the [shot of Hootie & the Blowfish logo] stupidest names in the history of rock. And yet despite that, they never seemed more than just a bar band.

Todd: Bunch of regular guys with a band.

Todd (VO): Nothing at all particularly amazing about them. Except for one major thing.

Todd: They sold 20 million records.

Clip of the band accepting Pop/Rock Favorite New Artist Award at the 1996 American Music Awards

Todd (VO): Even for the '90s, when the record industry was still swimming in money, the number of CDs moved by this one band was absolutely nuts. [clip of MTV News interview] In the year 1995 alone, they sold 12 million copies of their [cover appears onscreen of their...] debut album, Cracked Rear View.

Clip of Charlie Rose interview with the band

Charlie Rose: According to The New York Times, 1 out of 27 Americans own at least one of their albums.

Todd (VO): That sounds like it can't be true. Todd: But trust me, I was there, they were actually that big.

Video for Hootie & the Blowfish - "Time"

Todd (VO): Even my father, who did not listen to modern rock, bought that album. Hootie crossed demographics, made oceans of cash. [clip of live performance] Hootie & the Blowfish was America's band. Todd: And then... they weren't.

Clip of Hootie & the Blowfish - "Tucker's Town"

Darius: Staring back at you

Todd (VO): I've joked before that Hootie's second album might as well have been shipped directly into the [shot of...] used CD rack. I don't know if anyone at the time realized this was a career killer...

Todd: ...but history has written it off as one of the slumpiest sophomore slumps ever recorded.

Todd (VO): No one was predicting it'd do Cracked Rear View numbers, but Hootie took a [screenshot of Los Angeles Times article: "It's Not Much to Hoot About"] staggering 80% drop in sales. [shot of album cover for...] Even the title, Fairweather Johnson, seemed to predict how fickle the Hootie craze was.

Another clip from Charlie Rose interview

Dean Felber: We're, you know, hoping that in 10 years we'll still be together and that people can look back at that point and say, you know, "Well they, they put out 5 really good albums".

Todd: Mm. Yeah, no.

Todd (VO): By the end of 1996, it already seemed like everyone had written off the Blowfish as a regrettable era best left in the past. And even Hootie's defenders nowadays don't really have any interest in revisiting their unloved follow-up.

Todd: Except me. 'Cause I gotta know...

Video for Hootie & the Blowfish - "Old Man & Me"

Todd (VO): How does a band sell 12 million records in one year and then just disappear? How? How how how how how? Todd: Well, slowly but surely, with a little love and some tenderness, we will find an answer for how and why the Hootie phenomenon ended just as bafflingly and abruptly as it started. [sighs] This is Trainwreckords.

Trainwreckords intro, followed by album cover for Fairweather Johnson

Todd: Every so often, a writer will get this kind of...bug in their head, just like a dare to themselves, a challenge.

Todd (VO): [book cover of Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright] Like, "Can I write a whole novel without using the letter 'E'?", [screenshot of Slate article "Kanye West Has a Goblet" by Jonah Weiner] "Can I write an all-access celebrity profile interview with Kanye West that's just me reading his Twitter feed?"

Todd: Or, here's one: "Can I make a whole 20-minute video about [album cover for Fairweather Johnson] Hootie & the Blowfish's second album and make it interesting?" It's a tough assignment. I can't promise you I'm going to succeed.

Clip of VH1 performance

Todd (VO): I guess I wanted to do this just 'cause of one thing, which is the only reason this album qualifies for this show. I'm just fascinated by the sheer depth of the plunge. Todd: When you take a cracked rear view back into Hootie-mania, it does not make a whole lot of sense.

Clip of 2Pac and Kiss presenting the award for Best New Artist at the 1996 Grammy Awards

2Pac: And the Grammy goes to...[arrow points at 2Pac with text: "Tupac F-ing Shakur] Oh my, my homeboys! Hootie & the Blowfish!

Todd can do nothing but throw his hands up in bewilderment

Todd (VO): And then, basically immediately following this Grammy ceremony, they vanished from the face of the earth! How could they have turned out to be such a flash in the pan, when they had so little flash?!

Todd: Well, the easy conclusion to make about their downfall is that they were fucking lame, and we all snapped to our senses.

Clip of Hootie & the Blowfish performing on SNL

Todd (VO): Certainly after a year of overplay, Hootie & the Blowfish had to become "Hootie & the Backlash" real quick. I mean, they were so corny and edgeless.

Todd: In lead singer, Darius Rucker's own words, [reading while doing a Darius Rucker singing impression] "People hate us because we don't write songs about how much we hate our parents." [normal] I assume that's how he said it. But I feel like lameness alone doesn't really cover it.