"Everything" by Lifehouse, Friday, February 12, 2021

 

Before The Fray and OneRepublic, Lifehouse was the pop-rock band that appeared with their song "Hanging by a Moment" and then crossed over to the Christian market. Their debut album, No Name Face garnered a lot of love both in the Christian and pop markets. Songs like "Hanging By a Moment" and "Breathing" were huge Top 40 hits, while the song "Sick Cycle Carousel" was a hit on the Christian radio stations. The band signed a deal with Sparrow Records for their second album, Stanley Climbfall, and solidified their hold in the Christian market and lessened their hold on mainstream radio. However, their third and self-titled album produced their biggest pop hit "You and Me" and their fourth album Who We Are, lessened their grip on the Christian market. And by their fifth through seventh albums the band's pop appeal had diminished as their post-grunge sound fell out of favor with pop radio. 

HOW COULD ANYTHING BE BETTER THAN THIS? If we're going to talk about this song, we have to talk about Smallville. Honestly, I don't think this show has aged well. I'd have to rewatch it to find out. Maybe it just went on too long and outlived the writers intentions. CGI from old shows is embarrassing. What looked so realistic before is hard to watch. That's what I noticed when I watched The Matrix: Reloaded just 10 years ago. Maybe its stars never really went on to do much. Except for Allison Mack, of course, who played the fan's favorite character, Chloe, who was in love with young Clark Kent and kept track of all of the weird things that happened around town on her Wall of Weird. Something she didn't pin on the Wall of Weird that certainly belongs there is Allison Mack's involvement with the NXIVM cult. For that reason, rewatching Smallville will be a very hard task. But let's go back past the ridiculous later seasons to the core that made the show what it was. It was a high school drama, so let's keep the kids in school. I first started watching the show because of the music. The early seasons were focused on music. I watched the first three seasons on ABC Family. The show was squeaky clean until Season 4. A cliche small-town romance with a supernatural twist. The origin story of Superman, rebooted for Millennials. 

BECAUSE YOU'RE ALL I NEED. Lifehouse performed on Smallville twice and songs from their first three albums were included in the shows first four seasons. The pilot ends with this song. Clark is looking out his telescope, looking at the stars thinking about his crush, Lana Lang. He then imagines that she has saved a dance from the Homecoming dance for him. In the season finale, Lifehouse performs this song in the Smallville High prom, only to be interrupted by a tornado warning. Lifehouse and other music served as a musical soundtrack to the drama in this series, heightening moments of romance, tensions between characters, like Lex and his emotionally abusive father, Lionel, and moments of self discovery as Clark realizes his powers and purposes for them. Cheesy? Perhaps. But it was the early 2000s on the WB/CW network. This was around the time of Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls. Only Smallville was a supernatural teen drama. I miss when music played such a big role in television.