Dave's Song of the Day
Misery – Soul Asylum
Monday song of the day: Today’s song was about frustrations that came with success.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Soul Asylum was a popular band on the alternative scene. Then Grunge happened, and many alternative bands had mainstream success. Soul Asylum’s 1992 album
Grave Dancers Union went double platinum. The
Runaway Train single from that album reached #5 on the
Billboard Hot 100 and received massive MTV airplay.
The follow-up album,
Let Your Dim Light Shine, came in 1995. After a few years of capitalizing on their success, the band was feeling the pressure of promoting their music as a product and yearned for the earlier days when the music was more of a concern than record sales. The single from the album,
Misery, used the conceit of producing misery as a product to be sold as a metaphor for what the band had been through in the past few years.
Misery was a hit, but not on the scale of the earlier
Runaway Train. It reached #20 on the
Billboard Hot 100, and helped the album sell enough to go platinum. After that, with alternative music receding as a commercial force, Soul Asylum never had another Top 40 hit.
Tomorrow: My dog, Sam, eats purple flowers