We're out of the bottom 10 now, and of course that means it's time to start eliminating some of the female vocal bops...
...Nah, I'm just playing. It's more adult alternative, of course!
60. ALL FOR YOU
Average score: 5.142
Highest scores: 1 x 10 (
@CorgiCorgiCorgi )
Lowest scores: 3 x 0 (@
əʊæ,
@Daniel_O ,
@Ganache )
Chart positions: #11 Hot 100, #7 Radio Songs, #7 Mainstream Top 40, #1 Adult Top 40, #16 Adult Contemporary, #39 Modern Rock
Year-End Hot 100: #36 (1997), #76 (1998)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
I have a confession to make. While I was constructing the list, looking at compilations of big one-hitters of the day, “All for You” by Sister Hazel kept popping up, and I couldn't remember what it was. I did as soon as I first listened to it, but it took me somewhat by surprise: with the feminine band name of “Sister Hazel”, I had been expecting a female voice. In fact, no. This Florida band was named for Hazel Kirkland Williams, a missionary from their hometown of Gainesville, who ran a homeless shelter there. The band's lead singer Ken Block often saw her on public-access television locally, and thus when he formed the band in 1993, he turned to her for inspiration: he liked her messages about helping anybody in need and contributing to charitable efforts. As he said of the band's mission, “One of our basic philosophies is that we want people to think, feel, be moved, and at the end of the day or at the end of the show, we like them to leave feeling a little better than they did when they came in.” Sister Hazel apparently approved the name herself, and after they got big, the band would send her some money every month to help her in her charity work. Lovely of them to pay back like that.
This is another group with a pretty ordinary backstory. Actually, it has a fair few parallels to the Verve Pipe: they put out a couple of albums, the first of which, a self-titled record released in 1994, contained an early acoustic rendition of “All for You”. Then, it was time to hit the road, grinding hard in college venues and dive bars across the Southeast, playing over 200 shows a month in 1996 alone. Thanks to their local popularity, they ended up attracting the attention of Universal, who put out a more polished version of their second album
Somewhere More Familiar. Despite never reaching the top 40 on the album chart, it ended up going platinum, and “All for You” became a surprise hit; “surprise” in that it effectively bypassed the alternative rock stations where Sister Hazel normally would have been at home more or less completely. Instead, it went over far better than expected as a pop and adult-contemporary hit, remaining on the Hot 100 for 41 weeks. I might as well point out one thing while we're here, though. Sister Hazel, for all that they seem rather ordinary, avert one major trope of the one-hit wonder bands we see here: after lead guitarist Ryan Newell joined officially after their debut album (which he had played on as a guest musician), and they recruited drummer Mark Trojanowski shortly afterwards, they've kept the same line-up ever since – that's 24 years and counting! Quite a feat to begin with, but compared to the tribulations of most of their fellows, especially the eternal revolving door of bands-turned-more-or-less solo projects like the Crash Test Dummies or Marcy Playground, it becomes even more impressive.
Oh yeah, and their fanbase are called “Hazelnuts”. I've heard worse names for such things.
So what do I think?
6. I mean, it's like “Barely Breathing”. It's not terrible, but it really doesn't stick out among the landscape of Triple A radio in the late 90's, and could have been done by any number of other bands. Everything about it, from the layering of jangly clean electric guitars with acoustics, the organs in the background, the folky melodies that serve to make it feel “rootsy” for that tiniest bit of edge that Triple A demands, the subtle verses building into a louder and more upbeat chorus... you've heard this all before, and I really would like it if they could bring something new, or even just some truly amazing melodies, to the table. Ken Block's twangy Southern rock inflected voice is pleasant enough, but he doesn't really serve to inject it with anything more. The guitar solo does inject some more life into it, being a genuinely strong, melodic and easily memorable piece (shades of “My Sharona” perhaps?), but after that, back to business as usual. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty catchy tune. “All for You” aspires to be nothing more than pleasant, and succeeds at that... but next to its competition, that's not quite enough to progress further.
Where Are They Now?™
Sister Hazel, being as commercially friendly and easy-listening of a band as they were, easily could've had more hits – so why didn't they? I can't say for certain, but if I had to guess, there were some pretty boneheaded decisions made behind the scenes with regards to promoting follow-up hits. For example, one pretty stupid mistake was not immediately pushing another single from
Somewhere More Familiar to Top 40 radio after “All for You” became a hit there. The album's other main single was “Happy”, which didn't make the Hot 100, and while it appeared on the Adult Top 40 and both rock charts, it didn't get higher than #27 on any of those three. “We'll Find It” was included on the
Wedding Planner soundtrack, but didn't get pushed as a soundtrack single. Their follow-up album
Fortress also took quite a while to appear, not coming out until June 2000, almost three and a half years after “All for You” had peaked on the chart – the biggest alternative rock bands could get away with gaps that long between records, what with how much longevity they could have and how high CD sales were, but Sister Hazel probably weren't big enough to get away with that. Nevertheless, that album was far from a total failure, as the single “Change Your Mind” was actually a minor success: it made it as high as #59 on the Hot 100, and was a major hit on adult-pop radio, going to #5 on Adult Top 40. Again, though, things were slack when it came time to push a follow-up, as the second single “Champagne High” was another “minor adult contemporary play, no crossover” affair. After that, even though the album went gold, they were gone from Universal. I suspect it's a case where, after a breakthrough hit, they got overly high expectations pushed on them, and when they couldn't meet them, out the door you go!
They've continued to release music regularly right up to the present, mostly on their own independent label Croakin' Poets. Sister Hazel also belong to that rather curious class of bands where, even though they don't get much play on the rock or pop stations, the adult-pop and Triple A stations can still serve as a home for them, and so they continued to chart songs on the Adult Top 40 until well into the new millennium, though none were even as successful as “Change Your Mind”, let alone “All for You”. Their most recent song to chart, 2006's “Mandolin Moon”, also gets us a case of
OHW CROSSOVER – with an artist who isn't here! Yes, it features none other than Shawn Mullins, the creepily whispering guitar guy behind “Lullaby”. You all
loved him so much in the #1's rate that he made a comeback just for you!
Do not let this man sing lullabies to your child.
It also seems that Sister Hazel's devotion to charity runs further than just helping out their namesake. Ken Block has started a charity called Lyrics for Life, which gets musicians together for concerts and auctions to raise money for cancer research and patient-care charities, an endeavour to which he was driven by the death of his brother from cancer at a young age (and which also inspired him to write more sophisticated and personal material for the band). Since 2001, they've run an annual music festival called the Rock Boat, which takes place on a cruise ship travelling from port to port, and every year they have a big party-type event for fans called the Hazelnut Hang. I do always like to see musicians giving back to their fans with stuff like that. Actually, everything I've read about Sister Hazel makes them seem like the most solid bunch of blokes in the world, so big props to them for all this kind of stuff, seriously.
In recent years, Sister Hazel have also ended up recording in Nashville and heading more in the direction of country-rock, not such an odd move when you consider the Southern rock influences already in their sound. And it's paid off, it seems like, with their most recent full-length album, 2016's
Lighter in the Dark, reaching #4 on the country albums chart (and #79 on the overall Billboard 200). They even have a small concept going with their most recent release, a series of four EP's named for the four classical elements.
Wind and
Water came out last year, and checking on the band's Twitter,
Fire is now available for pre-order. OK, Sister Hazel haven't started releasing some kind of fantasy prog-rock album in four volumes, admittedly... but man, wouldn't it be awesome if they
did?
And as a small coda? Sadly, Sister Hazel Williams, the woman whose name became so famous through the band, passed away in 2016, at the age of 91.
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
It's hard to say what it is they saw in you
əʊæ (0): God what is this disastrous cacophony.
4Roses (1): Ew.
("All for Ew"?)
Ganache (0): Like many songs before and since radio destroyed this one by playing it in one continuous loop for like 3 years. (see also Two Princes and anything by Blues Traveler)
(So what you're saying is... you don't want the programmers to give 'em a run around?)
ModeRed (3): Gosh this is exciting and fresh. No, it really isn't.
Empty Shoebox (3): Why do all these rock vocalists sound the same?
(Y'ALL COMPARIN' US TO THEM YANKEES?! - Sister Hazel)
Seventeen Days (6): This was one of those bands that didn’t surprise me when I never heard from them again. The song is kinda catchy, but it’s so harmless that it just kind of hums along without any extreme variation.
yuuurei (4): I've literally never even heard of this before. Having listened, I'm not really surprised. It's not horrible, it just sounds like a song any of a dozen other alt-rock 90s bands might make.
(Nail on head.)
Auntie Beryl (3.9): What would REM sound like with all the imagination, art, zip and talent mechanically recovered from them? This.
(Or Around the Sun, one of the two.)
chanex (1): OK this is THAT song from the 90s I truly loathe and had blocked out for of my mind for such good reason. Yay my lowest score in the rate even if I thought I'd given it previously nope this is it!
And I can't do enough to prove it's all for you
Filippa (6): Nice rock song, maybe a bit uninspired …
unnameable (7): Pleasantly upbeat.
pop3blow2 (8): Hootie & the Blowfish + Counting Crows = Sister Hazel. Not horrible. Not great.
(Expect a lot of that in the coming eliminations. And a looooooong time in the 5's.)
DJHazey (7): Counting Crows soundalike and decent.
(I love the smell of hospitals in winter in the morning.)
DominoDancing (6.5): Fluffy alternative rock. Good guitar solo.
Hudweiser (7): This was boring until the guitar solo, where it sounds like a My Sharona-wannabe, but is at least fun at the same time.
berserkboi (7.7): Has aspects that are gold, but not really the stuff I would seek out repeatedly.
(*air guitar intensifies*)
WowWowWowWow (8): Running out of commentary… this song is fine in the background. Never made me want to run out and buy a Sister Hazel album though.
(Reminder, even though the album barely cracked the Top 50, it STILL went platinum. We spent a lot of money on CDs back then, didn't we?)
iheartpoptarts (9): I thought this was going to be something from one of those nun movies.
(Ah yeah, Sister Act! I remember that being a decent watch, maybe I should seek it out...)
CasuallyCrazed (8): I literally forgot Sister Hazel ever existed until now, but his songwriting is honestly genius.
CorgiCorgiCorgi (10): this song is a total guilty pleasure. I file it alongside Hear It From You and Two Princes - total 90s relics that sound super dated and aren't particularly exceptional in any way, but they're just so earnest that you have to love them.
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/A-328338-1237445645.jpeg.jpg)
