The 90's US One-Hit Wonders Rate: WINNER REVEALED - Goodbye, farewell and amen
- Thread starter Ironheade
- Start date
she/her
I wish I could half-like this post but you can have it!
he/him
I know it sounds so random that I don't love Groove Is In the Heart but while most bop all I hear is annoyingness.
she/her
Well I'm glad you know which half is which!
OK, got some Internet for now, here comes a post!
How appropriate for the sunny weather now I'm in Portugal for a week, eh?
15. STEAL MY SUNSHINE
Average score: 7.920
Highest scorees: 2 x 11 (@unnameable , @Blond ); 11 x 10 (@2014 , @DJHazey , @yuuurei , @pop3blow2 , @berserkboi , @Andy French , @chanex , @GimmeWork , @K94 , @4Roses , @Remorque )
Lowest scores: 1 x 0 (@Empty Shoebox )
Chart positions: #9 Hot 100, #5 Radio Songs, #3 Mainstream Top 40, #7 Adult Top 40, #5 Modern Rock
Year-End Hot 100: #78 (1999)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
Ah, summer! The “summer jam” industry has been one of the biggest drivers of the pop world for the last twenty years, and the hunt for that one light-hearted bop to serve as America's official “song of the summer” goes on to this day. But in 1999, if you ask me, there was only one real contender for the title. Well, I think it's fair to venture a guess that Len got their sunshine stolen when they failed to find any further success after their one iconic tune... and also dropped out of the top 10 of this rate, which they actually did make at one point, in what might have been one of the biggest upsets of the rate had they remained there. So, shall we, as the cast of Hair might say... let the sunshine in!
I have no idea what this is but it was the first Google Images result for "Len".
The creative core of Len was two Italian-Canadian siblings, Marc and Sharon Costanzo, who were born in Montreal before relocating to Toronto as children, getting heavily involved in the local indie music scene over there. Marc was even part of a very early incarnation of Sum 41 as their lead vocalist, though he left the band before they recorded anything. The name “Len” (under which he first started making homemade tapes in 1991) came from one of Marc's friends, and he freely admits that he only gave the project a band name so he could say that it was “more than a basement project”. He started getting into music from the age of thirteen, when he started buying samplers and music production gear, and would start producing anything he could think of in a casual sort of way. Even Sharon's involvement as the other half of the duo was casual, with Marc bringing her in to sing on a few of his tracks whenever he felt she would fit in, before she became a full-time band member. It was in these circumstances that Len put out their first two albums, 1995's debut Superstar and their 1996 sophomore Get Your Legs Broke, on the tiny indie label Funtrip Records. Both of them consisted of basic straight-up alt-rock with a goofy edge to it, and neither one garnered any sort of attention from the wider public.
Don't worry guys, the thought of stopping it never even crossed my mind.
But the vogue for summery, mildly alternative silliness was strong in 1999, and I suppose the major labels thought they could do something with Len. They got signed to a bigger label in The Work Group, a label that was distributed by Epic; they included Jamiroquai among their signings, and in 1999 they would also put out Jennifer Lopez' debut album and, in an OHW CROSSOVER, the American release of Eagle-Eye Cherry's Desireless, the same year that Len put out their major label debut You Can't Stop the Bum Rush. Len took a major turn away from their alternative rock roots with this one, and began making what they called “white boys from Canada hip-hop”, influenced by their love of 80's pop culture and old-school hip-hop. And I don't mean Rakim and Big Daddy Kane old school – I mean earlier than that, like some Kurtis Blow shit. They even managed another OHW CROSSOVER by getting Biz Markie in for the song “Beautiful Day”! This was influenced by their friendship and collaboration with a rap group from Nova Scotia called Hip Club Groove, one member of which, Cory Bowles, went on to become part of the cast of Trailer Park Boys. (On a side note, they also attempted to recruit experimental hip-hop maven Buck 65, soon to become a key part of Anticon's nerd-rap illuminati, as a full-time member of Len. He turned them down, but still provided record scratches on the track “Cold Chillin'”.) By Marc's own admission: “A lot of it's terrible”. But for the American record-buying public, there was at least one song that they certainly didn't think was terrible.
I know this much is... ANDREA! Oh, wait...
Sometimes, there isn't really much to say about the creation of the one-hit song itself. Not here, though, because some of the lore behind “Steal My Sunshine” is just great, seriously. Apparently, the inspiration came from when Marc had visited a rave, during a time when he and Sharon had fallen out and not spoken for months, and they played the Andrea True Connection's 1976 disco hit “More, More, More”, a sample from the bridge of which would serve as the sample that drove most of the song; Marc also drew inspiration from “Don't You Want Me” in the alternating male and female verse structure. He was trying to recapture the euphoric feeling of the rave, and to make a reconciliation with his sister – his “sunshine”, so to speak. Aww. Seems it worked, anyhow, as the two recorded it on tape and threw it under Marc's bed, and they almost didn't plan to include the song on You Can't Stop the Bum Rush at all because they thought it was a throwaway at first – so much so, in fact, that when they made the decision to include it, they'd lost the master tape and had a lot of trouble finding it! Anyway, “Steal My Sunshine” got sent to the massively influential Los Angeles station KROQ, which back in the day was one of the prime venues that could make or break a band nationally (as we have previously discussed with earlier beneficiaries Harvey Danger in this rate). They instantly declared it “the song of the summer”, and indeed so it proved to be. It also got a further boost in popularity from being included on the soundtrack of the film Go, so much so that Work bumped up the release date of You Can't Stop the Bum Rush a month to capitalize on it. “Steal My Sunshine” eventually became a massive crossover hit, making the Top 10 on multiple Billboard charts, and even being nominated for Best Single at the 2000 Juno Awards (losing out to the Tragically Hip and “Bobcaygeon”). Len celebrated this massive run of success by spending most of their $100,000 budget for the song's video on alcohol – such a quantity of alcohol, in fact, that they broke their hotel's elevator trying to take it back to their room! Man, we spent so much money on music promotion back then...
So what do I think?
NINE.
You know, what's struck me about “Steal My Sunshine”, relistening to it for this, is how goddamn weird it is. The music is a totally out-of-time mashup of the 70's disco sample with a more modern hip-hop beat, old-school electro drums slammed uncomfortably up against indie slacker-rock guitars and piano, like if the Sugarhill Gang and the Beastie Boys had an accident with the teleporter from The Fly. The bizarre rambling lyrics, insofar as they can be discerned from amidst the mushily enunciated vocal performances, make no sense at all. The contrast between Marc's gruff wheeze and Sharon's feather-light sugary voice is almost cartoonish, like they don't appear to have come from the same song. Nothing about it seems like it should work. And yet. And yet it all absolutely does. The bassline which bounces up and down like a rubber ball is a fantastic, immediate hook, combined with those thumping piano chords which also leap around in a similar yet subtly different rhythm. The drums also set up a subtly groovy head-nodding backbone, and the phased sounds in the song's bridges are a delight. And even though that basic instrumental set-up repeats throughout almost the entire song, it never seems to get repetitive or irritating whatsoever, not just because it's so good and catchy, but because Len play with it in some pretty interesting ways. One is the retro synth embellishments, which pop in and out at appropriate times to add an extra layer of warped goofy fun to the music, but the less immediately obvious one is what they do with the vocal melodies. On the verses, both Marc and Sharon seem slightly at odds with the beat, their lines cutting off in strange places, the melodies unhurried and laid-back compared to the staccato bounce of the piano. But then on the chorus, they have quite an interesting interaction, Sharon's voice cutting through crystal-clear as the production on Marc's voice makes it swirl around and become almost a part of the synths and piano with how close it is to them. For a song that Marc seems so dismissive of at times, it's pretty clever stuff. And of course, those sweet “my sunshiiiiiiiine” vocal parts from Sharon towards the end are just gorgeous. Yeah, I can't even deny it, this song is a fucking BOP. If it had indeed made the top 10 in the end, I would not be complaining.
Although, the song's better with the spoken-word interjections intact. I WANT MY BUTTER TARTS DAMMIT
Where Are They Now?™
Unfortunately for Len, and their managers' pocketbooks, You Can't Stop the Bum Rush was not exactly an album overflowing with potential hits. The attempted follow-up single was “Feeling Alright”, probably the closest thing that Len had to the summery bubblegum pop-rock of “Steal My Sunshine”, but it completely tanked. It's not terrible, a decent slice of poppy garage rock with some awkwardly brandished urban slang and a ridiculous shred guitar solo from Poison's C.C. DeVille (!!!!), but that combination was never likely to do well, even at the height of goofy upbeat songs being in vogue that was 1999. They did manage to squeeze out another single with “Cryptik Souls Crew”, a straight-up tribute to old-school hip-hop posse cuts which featured a number of local rappers, and while that song did manage a surprisingly high #28 in the UK (compared to #8 for “Steal My Sunshine”), it quickly slid down the charts. The main problem, if you ask me, is that You Can't Stop the Bum Rush is a document of a band that really had no idea what they wanted to be, and anybody who expected anything like “Steal My Sunshine” was going to be turned off by Len's genre-hopping approach. I think we can put Len down as another artist in this rate who had pretensions towards being an eclectic jack-of-all-trades like Beck or someone like that – they attempt chillout, pop-punk, electro, hip-hop, and even Krautrock on the album – but they certainly don't have the ability to pull it off, with a lot of the experiments just coming across as awkward and unfitting. What was it Marc said? “A lot of it's terrible”? Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. This is a band didn't have it in them to even make little-known-but-appreciated material, a band who really were just fucking around and lucked into a hit in spite of themselves.
And the thing is, they were totally aware of that. Here is what Marc has to say about the time immediately following “Steal My Sunshine”, from a 2014 interview with Stereogum:
To make matters worse, The Work Group folded in early 2000, and while most of their artists were transferred to its parent label and distributor Epic, Len were dropped for having a lack of further commercial singles. They instead moved to DreamWorks Records, getting given a $750,000 advance for promising that they could deliver the further hits that You Can't Stop the Bum Rush had failed to spawn. Inevitably, they could not. Len were supposed to deliver their next album in 2002, but DreamWorks Records was already falling apart, a precursor to it being totally sold off in 2003, so it never happened. A promo version of the album, entitled We Be Who We Be, came out on the obscure little Linus Entertainment in 2002, but it would not see full release in a finished version until 2005, under the title of The Diary of the Madmen, on another small indie label called Venus Corp. Needless to say, it didn't see any kind of success.
Looks a bit dark for the "Steal My Sunshine" band, no?
Len briefly re-activated themselves in 2012, and put out a new album called It's Easy If You Try. To hear them tell it, it was another very casual thing, with Marc and Sharon having accumulated enough demos and decided that it could be a Len album. After that, activity from the band slowly wound down again – their official website doesn't appear to work, and the band's Twitter and other social media pages, all of them owned by Marc, are posted on only very infrequently. In the interim, Marc went to work for EMI's publishing division. He still works in the music industry in some lower-profile capacity, but in the Stereogum interview above, he wouldn't disclose what he was actually doing at the time. Sharon now lives in the UK, and she and Marc are apparently not terribly close these days (I couldn't find any sources to explain what might have happened there), so the chances of a new Len album ever happening are slim-to-none, though Marc has said that he might like to get back into music someday. Well, hey. At least he doesn't seem to have had his sunshine stolen over a lack of further success.
Pictured: about a third of Broken Social Scene.
Oh yeah, and that guy on “Steal My Sunshine”, the one who asks if you like butter tarts? That is occasional Len member Brendan Canning, and the same year that the song was a hit, he would go on to form a far more lasting institution of Canadian indie rock: Broken Social Scene. Oh yeah, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley was also in the studio while they were recording it. Jeez... it all comes full circle!
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
Ain't no sunshine
Empty Shoebox (0): This song has always angered me and that isn't going to change any time soon. Terrible music, terrible vocals, terrible lyrics, I hate it all.
ModeRed (5): Doesn’t do anything for me, apart from annoy with the spoken bits.
DominoDancing (4): Eh. I didn't get the hype for this during the plug.dj session. It's pretty horrible in every regard. Super repetitive, weak performances, uninspired songwriting. Still don't get it. (You know, I feel like all those should apply on paper... and yet, for me, they somehow don't. Weird. Eerie.)
Walking on sunshine
Ganache (9): Anything that samples Andrea True Connection gets a high score.
WowWowWowWow (9): Love that Andrea True Connection sample! A summertime playlist staple. Is there anywhere in the USA to get something approximating a real Canadian butter tart? (No idea. Try the Upper Midwest, maybe?)
iheartpoptarts (9): Everybody expects me to stan this because Canada but I don’t love love love it. (Eh, you love it an appropriate amount, I'd say.)
saviodxl (6.2): Probably one of those summer songs that fell into oblivion. Enjoyable.
Untouchable Ace (8.4): I wish it had all male vocals. (A rare sentence on this forum!)
CasuallyCrazed (9): I used to think the girl in this band was Lene from Aqua. Still wish it was to be honest. (You know, I can kinda see it.)
Auntie Beryl (9.1): Impossible not to smile along with Steal My Sunshine. Well, I find it difficult, and I’m a grumpy fucker.
Hudweiser (9): I love this - so happy!
Seventeen Days (8.25): This one still slaps. I give them big props for sampling the disco classic “More, More, More” on this track. Also, please tell me I’m not the only one who legit thought the guy and the girl were a couple in the video. When I found out they were brother and sister, I was like… wait, what?! (I don't think you'd be alone in that, honestly.)
DJHazey (10): SHARON I LOVE YOU. I wanted to be her boyfriend so badly at the time. I was jealous of the guy at first but found out they were siblings so "The dream was alive". *heart pounds* (Indeed, Seventeen Days was not alone! - Ed.) Right up there with mysterious girl in the "Believe" video as my #1 childhood crush in a music video.
chanex (10): "Man of the Year" is my personal Len fave and it's so apt that Biz Markie is on this list as well! (YOOOOOUUUUUU - Ed.) But yeah, an undeniable jam that I love to death.
4Roses (10): I want to go to a beach right now. (I am literally typing this from the beach! Nerr nerr.)
2014 (10): Gorgeous and so underrated. Summer in a song!
berserkboi (10): I love this in all its silliness and accidental hopefulness, and it also has a fantastic sound! (The lyrics for this are actually not that upbeat if you look at it on paper... in so far as you can make any sense out of them, of course.)
yuuurei (10): Another Canadian classic, just like the butter tart. A great beat backing a fun and kooky take on depression, if the lyric annotations on Genius are to be believed. Idk what I'm trying to get at, I just wanted to say something about this song since I love it so much.
pop3blow2 (10):
Andy French (10): "Well, DOES HE LIKE BUTTER TARTS?" (Yes. *burp*)
Blond (11): You know what? This song is fucking stupid but it oozes 1999 from every pore and it’s one of the first singles ever owned, so I absolutely love it. This is that throwback summery bop that I need on a wintry night, at the end of what may well be the shittiest year in living memory. Also I’ve always associated this song with summer but I just realised that it peaked in December in the UK, so maybe we all felt like I do now back in the winter of 1999.
unnameable (11): Such an anthem. Once you hear it, the hook is an earworm all day. The lyrics infect your mind so much it’ll impair your tribal lunar speak. Every slacker in the 90s (and I was at university at the time so I knew a few) loved this. (Still a slacker now. Still love this.)
How appropriate for the sunny weather now I'm in Portugal for a week, eh?
15. STEAL MY SUNSHINE
Average score: 7.920
Highest scorees: 2 x 11 (@unnameable , @Blond ); 11 x 10 (@2014 , @DJHazey , @yuuurei , @pop3blow2 , @berserkboi , @Andy French , @chanex , @GimmeWork , @K94 , @4Roses , @Remorque )
Lowest scores: 1 x 0 (@Empty Shoebox )
Chart positions: #9 Hot 100, #5 Radio Songs, #3 Mainstream Top 40, #7 Adult Top 40, #5 Modern Rock
Year-End Hot 100: #78 (1999)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
Ah, summer! The “summer jam” industry has been one of the biggest drivers of the pop world for the last twenty years, and the hunt for that one light-hearted bop to serve as America's official “song of the summer” goes on to this day. But in 1999, if you ask me, there was only one real contender for the title. Well, I think it's fair to venture a guess that Len got their sunshine stolen when they failed to find any further success after their one iconic tune... and also dropped out of the top 10 of this rate, which they actually did make at one point, in what might have been one of the biggest upsets of the rate had they remained there. So, shall we, as the cast of Hair might say... let the sunshine in!
I have no idea what this is but it was the first Google Images result for "Len".
The creative core of Len was two Italian-Canadian siblings, Marc and Sharon Costanzo, who were born in Montreal before relocating to Toronto as children, getting heavily involved in the local indie music scene over there. Marc was even part of a very early incarnation of Sum 41 as their lead vocalist, though he left the band before they recorded anything. The name “Len” (under which he first started making homemade tapes in 1991) came from one of Marc's friends, and he freely admits that he only gave the project a band name so he could say that it was “more than a basement project”. He started getting into music from the age of thirteen, when he started buying samplers and music production gear, and would start producing anything he could think of in a casual sort of way. Even Sharon's involvement as the other half of the duo was casual, with Marc bringing her in to sing on a few of his tracks whenever he felt she would fit in, before she became a full-time band member. It was in these circumstances that Len put out their first two albums, 1995's debut Superstar and their 1996 sophomore Get Your Legs Broke, on the tiny indie label Funtrip Records. Both of them consisted of basic straight-up alt-rock with a goofy edge to it, and neither one garnered any sort of attention from the wider public.
Don't worry guys, the thought of stopping it never even crossed my mind.
But the vogue for summery, mildly alternative silliness was strong in 1999, and I suppose the major labels thought they could do something with Len. They got signed to a bigger label in The Work Group, a label that was distributed by Epic; they included Jamiroquai among their signings, and in 1999 they would also put out Jennifer Lopez' debut album and, in an OHW CROSSOVER, the American release of Eagle-Eye Cherry's Desireless, the same year that Len put out their major label debut You Can't Stop the Bum Rush. Len took a major turn away from their alternative rock roots with this one, and began making what they called “white boys from Canada hip-hop”, influenced by their love of 80's pop culture and old-school hip-hop. And I don't mean Rakim and Big Daddy Kane old school – I mean earlier than that, like some Kurtis Blow shit. They even managed another OHW CROSSOVER by getting Biz Markie in for the song “Beautiful Day”! This was influenced by their friendship and collaboration with a rap group from Nova Scotia called Hip Club Groove, one member of which, Cory Bowles, went on to become part of the cast of Trailer Park Boys. (On a side note, they also attempted to recruit experimental hip-hop maven Buck 65, soon to become a key part of Anticon's nerd-rap illuminati, as a full-time member of Len. He turned them down, but still provided record scratches on the track “Cold Chillin'”.) By Marc's own admission: “A lot of it's terrible”. But for the American record-buying public, there was at least one song that they certainly didn't think was terrible.
I know this much is... ANDREA! Oh, wait...
Sometimes, there isn't really much to say about the creation of the one-hit song itself. Not here, though, because some of the lore behind “Steal My Sunshine” is just great, seriously. Apparently, the inspiration came from when Marc had visited a rave, during a time when he and Sharon had fallen out and not spoken for months, and they played the Andrea True Connection's 1976 disco hit “More, More, More”, a sample from the bridge of which would serve as the sample that drove most of the song; Marc also drew inspiration from “Don't You Want Me” in the alternating male and female verse structure. He was trying to recapture the euphoric feeling of the rave, and to make a reconciliation with his sister – his “sunshine”, so to speak. Aww. Seems it worked, anyhow, as the two recorded it on tape and threw it under Marc's bed, and they almost didn't plan to include the song on You Can't Stop the Bum Rush at all because they thought it was a throwaway at first – so much so, in fact, that when they made the decision to include it, they'd lost the master tape and had a lot of trouble finding it! Anyway, “Steal My Sunshine” got sent to the massively influential Los Angeles station KROQ, which back in the day was one of the prime venues that could make or break a band nationally (as we have previously discussed with earlier beneficiaries Harvey Danger in this rate). They instantly declared it “the song of the summer”, and indeed so it proved to be. It also got a further boost in popularity from being included on the soundtrack of the film Go, so much so that Work bumped up the release date of You Can't Stop the Bum Rush a month to capitalize on it. “Steal My Sunshine” eventually became a massive crossover hit, making the Top 10 on multiple Billboard charts, and even being nominated for Best Single at the 2000 Juno Awards (losing out to the Tragically Hip and “Bobcaygeon”). Len celebrated this massive run of success by spending most of their $100,000 budget for the song's video on alcohol – such a quantity of alcohol, in fact, that they broke their hotel's elevator trying to take it back to their room! Man, we spent so much money on music promotion back then...
So what do I think?
NINE.
You know, what's struck me about “Steal My Sunshine”, relistening to it for this, is how goddamn weird it is. The music is a totally out-of-time mashup of the 70's disco sample with a more modern hip-hop beat, old-school electro drums slammed uncomfortably up against indie slacker-rock guitars and piano, like if the Sugarhill Gang and the Beastie Boys had an accident with the teleporter from The Fly. The bizarre rambling lyrics, insofar as they can be discerned from amidst the mushily enunciated vocal performances, make no sense at all. The contrast between Marc's gruff wheeze and Sharon's feather-light sugary voice is almost cartoonish, like they don't appear to have come from the same song. Nothing about it seems like it should work. And yet. And yet it all absolutely does. The bassline which bounces up and down like a rubber ball is a fantastic, immediate hook, combined with those thumping piano chords which also leap around in a similar yet subtly different rhythm. The drums also set up a subtly groovy head-nodding backbone, and the phased sounds in the song's bridges are a delight. And even though that basic instrumental set-up repeats throughout almost the entire song, it never seems to get repetitive or irritating whatsoever, not just because it's so good and catchy, but because Len play with it in some pretty interesting ways. One is the retro synth embellishments, which pop in and out at appropriate times to add an extra layer of warped goofy fun to the music, but the less immediately obvious one is what they do with the vocal melodies. On the verses, both Marc and Sharon seem slightly at odds with the beat, their lines cutting off in strange places, the melodies unhurried and laid-back compared to the staccato bounce of the piano. But then on the chorus, they have quite an interesting interaction, Sharon's voice cutting through crystal-clear as the production on Marc's voice makes it swirl around and become almost a part of the synths and piano with how close it is to them. For a song that Marc seems so dismissive of at times, it's pretty clever stuff. And of course, those sweet “my sunshiiiiiiiine” vocal parts from Sharon towards the end are just gorgeous. Yeah, I can't even deny it, this song is a fucking BOP. If it had indeed made the top 10 in the end, I would not be complaining.
Although, the song's better with the spoken-word interjections intact. I WANT MY BUTTER TARTS DAMMIT
Where Are They Now?™
Unfortunately for Len, and their managers' pocketbooks, You Can't Stop the Bum Rush was not exactly an album overflowing with potential hits. The attempted follow-up single was “Feeling Alright”, probably the closest thing that Len had to the summery bubblegum pop-rock of “Steal My Sunshine”, but it completely tanked. It's not terrible, a decent slice of poppy garage rock with some awkwardly brandished urban slang and a ridiculous shred guitar solo from Poison's C.C. DeVille (!!!!), but that combination was never likely to do well, even at the height of goofy upbeat songs being in vogue that was 1999. They did manage to squeeze out another single with “Cryptik Souls Crew”, a straight-up tribute to old-school hip-hop posse cuts which featured a number of local rappers, and while that song did manage a surprisingly high #28 in the UK (compared to #8 for “Steal My Sunshine”), it quickly slid down the charts. The main problem, if you ask me, is that You Can't Stop the Bum Rush is a document of a band that really had no idea what they wanted to be, and anybody who expected anything like “Steal My Sunshine” was going to be turned off by Len's genre-hopping approach. I think we can put Len down as another artist in this rate who had pretensions towards being an eclectic jack-of-all-trades like Beck or someone like that – they attempt chillout, pop-punk, electro, hip-hop, and even Krautrock on the album – but they certainly don't have the ability to pull it off, with a lot of the experiments just coming across as awkward and unfitting. What was it Marc said? “A lot of it's terrible”? Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. This is a band didn't have it in them to even make little-known-but-appreciated material, a band who really were just fucking around and lucked into a hit in spite of themselves.
And the thing is, they were totally aware of that. Here is what Marc has to say about the time immediately following “Steal My Sunshine”, from a 2014 interview with Stereogum:
To make matters worse, The Work Group folded in early 2000, and while most of their artists were transferred to its parent label and distributor Epic, Len were dropped for having a lack of further commercial singles. They instead moved to DreamWorks Records, getting given a $750,000 advance for promising that they could deliver the further hits that You Can't Stop the Bum Rush had failed to spawn. Inevitably, they could not. Len were supposed to deliver their next album in 2002, but DreamWorks Records was already falling apart, a precursor to it being totally sold off in 2003, so it never happened. A promo version of the album, entitled We Be Who We Be, came out on the obscure little Linus Entertainment in 2002, but it would not see full release in a finished version until 2005, under the title of The Diary of the Madmen, on another small indie label called Venus Corp. Needless to say, it didn't see any kind of success.
Looks a bit dark for the "Steal My Sunshine" band, no?
Len briefly re-activated themselves in 2012, and put out a new album called It's Easy If You Try. To hear them tell it, it was another very casual thing, with Marc and Sharon having accumulated enough demos and decided that it could be a Len album. After that, activity from the band slowly wound down again – their official website doesn't appear to work, and the band's Twitter and other social media pages, all of them owned by Marc, are posted on only very infrequently. In the interim, Marc went to work for EMI's publishing division. He still works in the music industry in some lower-profile capacity, but in the Stereogum interview above, he wouldn't disclose what he was actually doing at the time. Sharon now lives in the UK, and she and Marc are apparently not terribly close these days (I couldn't find any sources to explain what might have happened there), so the chances of a new Len album ever happening are slim-to-none, though Marc has said that he might like to get back into music someday. Well, hey. At least he doesn't seem to have had his sunshine stolen over a lack of further success.
Pictured: about a third of Broken Social Scene.
Oh yeah, and that guy on “Steal My Sunshine”, the one who asks if you like butter tarts? That is occasional Len member Brendan Canning, and the same year that the song was a hit, he would go on to form a far more lasting institution of Canadian indie rock: Broken Social Scene. Oh yeah, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley was also in the studio while they were recording it. Jeez... it all comes full circle!
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
Ain't no sunshine
Empty Shoebox (0): This song has always angered me and that isn't going to change any time soon. Terrible music, terrible vocals, terrible lyrics, I hate it all.
ModeRed (5): Doesn’t do anything for me, apart from annoy with the spoken bits.
DominoDancing (4): Eh. I didn't get the hype for this during the plug.dj session. It's pretty horrible in every regard. Super repetitive, weak performances, uninspired songwriting. Still don't get it. (You know, I feel like all those should apply on paper... and yet, for me, they somehow don't. Weird. Eerie.)
Walking on sunshine
Ganache (9): Anything that samples Andrea True Connection gets a high score.
WowWowWowWow (9): Love that Andrea True Connection sample! A summertime playlist staple. Is there anywhere in the USA to get something approximating a real Canadian butter tart? (No idea. Try the Upper Midwest, maybe?)
iheartpoptarts (9): Everybody expects me to stan this because Canada but I don’t love love love it. (Eh, you love it an appropriate amount, I'd say.)
saviodxl (6.2): Probably one of those summer songs that fell into oblivion. Enjoyable.
Untouchable Ace (8.4): I wish it had all male vocals. (A rare sentence on this forum!)
CasuallyCrazed (9): I used to think the girl in this band was Lene from Aqua. Still wish it was to be honest. (You know, I can kinda see it.)
Auntie Beryl (9.1): Impossible not to smile along with Steal My Sunshine. Well, I find it difficult, and I’m a grumpy fucker.
Hudweiser (9): I love this - so happy!
Seventeen Days (8.25): This one still slaps. I give them big props for sampling the disco classic “More, More, More” on this track. Also, please tell me I’m not the only one who legit thought the guy and the girl were a couple in the video. When I found out they were brother and sister, I was like… wait, what?! (I don't think you'd be alone in that, honestly.)
DJHazey (10): SHARON I LOVE YOU. I wanted to be her boyfriend so badly at the time. I was jealous of the guy at first but found out they were siblings so "The dream was alive". *heart pounds* (Indeed, Seventeen Days was not alone! - Ed.) Right up there with mysterious girl in the "Believe" video as my #1 childhood crush in a music video.
chanex (10): "Man of the Year" is my personal Len fave and it's so apt that Biz Markie is on this list as well! (YOOOOOUUUUUU - Ed.) But yeah, an undeniable jam that I love to death.
4Roses (10): I want to go to a beach right now. (I am literally typing this from the beach! Nerr nerr.)
2014 (10): Gorgeous and so underrated. Summer in a song!
berserkboi (10): I love this in all its silliness and accidental hopefulness, and it also has a fantastic sound! (The lyrics for this are actually not that upbeat if you look at it on paper... in so far as you can make any sense out of them, of course.)
yuuurei (10): Another Canadian classic, just like the butter tart. A great beat backing a fun and kooky take on depression, if the lyric annotations on Genius are to be believed. Idk what I'm trying to get at, I just wanted to say something about this song since I love it so much.
pop3blow2 (10):
- “Sharon…I love youuuuuu! “ This song is just a ABSOLUTE GEM! If [SPOILER FOR POP3BLOW2's 11 REDACTED. - Ed.] weren’t in this rate, this would’ve been my 11. It's probably my favorite song in the rate... and among my faves of all time. This song has always reminded me of some ramshackle Super-Slacker duet from a lost modern day Grease-type musical or something. It's that killer use of boy-girl lead vocals. The updated take on a ‘American Graffitit’ stylized video, added to this portrait of this song being a perfect time capsule of late 90’s culture. It’s beyond brilliant.
- When Sharon sings, ‘L-A-T-E-R that week’ it’s one of my single favorite moments in the history of pop music. The whole song is a brilliant mess of in jokes, weird narratives, seemingly nonsensical lyrics, & a catchy as hell hook. This is what rock/pop is supposed to be, to me. A bunch of young people goofing off & making 'noise' their parents probably don't understand... but which communicates perfectly to a whole generation of kids. I was always so happy this song was a hit. It captures the IDGAF attitude of youth, as well as any song I’ve heard… in any genre of music. Unlike say, Punk or harder rap, it’s not sonically abrasive, promoting destruction, or necessarily overly rebellious in any way ...on the surface. Bu its rebellion is that LEN are their own thing & this is their time... and will they do whatever the hell they want to. I love that they spent $100,000 on a video that was basically just a party!
- And that video was low-key iconic, too. Just a bunch of young people goofing off & having fun. The whole song is basically about living in the moment & moving on from setbacks… using its own quirky narrative. It’s perfect pop in every single respect. Couple the video, with singular unique of the track, & a title like ’Steal My Sunshine’ & you have the makings of anthem that is both celebratory & defiant. You won’t steal our sunshine.
- The album version is actually better to me, because I love all the absurd monologues. It just adds to goofiness of everything. Also, the ’Karen Sharon, I LOVEEEEE YOU part’ makes me smile every time.’ (whatever he hollers there!)
- (I love you. - Ed.)
Andy French (10): "Well, DOES HE LIKE BUTTER TARTS?" (Yes. *burp*)
Blond (11): You know what? This song is fucking stupid but it oozes 1999 from every pore and it’s one of the first singles ever owned, so I absolutely love it. This is that throwback summery bop that I need on a wintry night, at the end of what may well be the shittiest year in living memory. Also I’ve always associated this song with summer but I just realised that it peaked in December in the UK, so maybe we all felt like I do now back in the winter of 1999.
unnameable (11): Such an anthem. Once you hear it, the hook is an earworm all day. The lyrics infect your mind so much it’ll impair your tribal lunar speak. Every slacker in the 90s (and I was at university at the time so I knew a few) loved this. (Still a slacker now. Still love this.)
He/Him
Awwwww, I was hopeful this could reach Top 10! Glad to hear it did for a little while, but just not final results :(
I didn't realise the lyrics weren't fun - I blame my ESL, and a shame pointed out the 'unclear' delivery of said lyrics. Still fantastic all the same!
I didn't realise the lyrics weren't fun - I blame my ESL, and a shame pointed out the 'unclear' delivery of said lyrics. Still fantastic all the same!
Funny you should say that because I don't remember there ever being a June with worse weather in Portugal.
I have no idea what this is but it was the first Google Images result for "Len".
That's actually a vocaloid. Len and his sister Rin are probably the most popular ones after Hatsune Miku
she/her
Butter tarts, iconic in Canada. My grandmother is very very good at them. Be jealous!
I had no idea he was in Sum 41. What.
I had no idea he was in Sum 41. What.
he/him
I have laid on the grass Sunday morning (of last week) too many times for this to fail! Who let the zero taste brigade in?
Well, this is some shit. I can't believe this didn't make the top 10.
My essay for Steal My Sunshine was the longest I wrote for this rate (even over my 11). It's among my favorite pop songs ever. It's everything great about pop music from concentrate, as far as I'm concerned.
As if I didn't say enough, I did have a few other random thoughts about it.
One of my fave bands is Counting Crows. I remember reading an interview with lead-singer/songwriter Adam Duritz in 1999. He basically said something , to the effect of, that he loved Steal My Sunshine so much the first time he heard it, that it inspired their song 'Hanginaround' (the first single off their 1999 album This Desert Life). You can really hear the influence on the piano loop in the song.
I even randomly thought of Steal My Sunshine while listening to fellow Canadian pop sorceress Carly Rae Jepsen's new album recently. 'Feel Right' gave me some vibes. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some influence there.
Anyways, normally a top 15 placing would be fine, but there's a couple of songs in front Steal My Sunshine that are head scratchers to me, to be honest....and literally stealing their sunshine. (Truthfully, I'd still be upset if it left before the top 5, so who am I kidding with this top 10 stuff.)
My essay for Steal My Sunshine was the longest I wrote for this rate (even over my 11). It's among my favorite pop songs ever. It's everything great about pop music from concentrate, as far as I'm concerned.
As if I didn't say enough, I did have a few other random thoughts about it.
One of my fave bands is Counting Crows. I remember reading an interview with lead-singer/songwriter Adam Duritz in 1999. He basically said something , to the effect of, that he loved Steal My Sunshine so much the first time he heard it, that it inspired their song 'Hanginaround' (the first single off their 1999 album This Desert Life). You can really hear the influence on the piano loop in the song.
I even randomly thought of Steal My Sunshine while listening to fellow Canadian pop sorceress Carly Rae Jepsen's new album recently. 'Feel Right' gave me some vibes. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some influence there.
Anyways, normally a top 15 placing would be fine, but there's a couple of songs in front Steal My Sunshine that are head scratchers to me, to be honest....and literally stealing their sunshine. (Truthfully, I'd still be upset if it left before the top 5, so who am I kidding with this top 10 stuff.)
she/her
I'm still so mad about this elimination, I swear some of you wouldn't know good tunes if they came up and kicked you in the face.
They're honestly so addictive and delicious. I bake a ton of them every xmas, ostensibly for my family but really just so I have an excuse to inhale some myself. Ditto for Nanaimo bars, no offense but we really have the best baked goods up here.