“Whatever It Takes” by Lifehouse, Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Lifehouse was a made-for-TV band from their 2001 debut. The band was commercially marketed to many shows and movies. But unlike many of the other artists filling TV soundtracks, Lifehouse had radio hits. The band had Billboard’s number 1 song of 2001, “Hanging By a Moment” and the number 5 hit “You and Me.” Both songs feature two different sounds of the ‘00s rock band. The band debuted with the post-grunge sounds on No Name Face. “Hanging By a Moment” eclipses the other two singles, “Sick Cycle Carousel” and “Breathing.” The band’s second album, Stanley Climbfall, also appeared as a sophomore slump, with the album’s two singles, “Spin” and “Take Me Away,” failing to impact the pop charts. Often this is the end of the story for pop-rock bands.
I’LL KEEP US TOGETHER. While rock audiences were ambivalent to Lifehouse, the age of pop-rock was at its peak in the mid-’00s. Lifehouse continued releasing rock songs, but no longer with heavy guitars and drums on their eponymous third record in 2005. The TV-ready tracks saw the band return to Smallville and return to pop radio with “You and Me.” The band followed up their third record with 2007’s Who We Are. The three singles were moderately successful on Billboard’s Hot 100, but much more successful on the Adult Contemporary and Adult Alternative Airplay (AAA) formats. Today’s song, “Whatever It Takes,” was the band’s second single from the album. It’s a straightforward earnest ballad, of which lead singer Jason Wade said, "I think the main message of this song, at least for me personally when I was writing the lyrics, is just how difficult it can be to be in a relationship.” Unlike previous Lifehouse albums, RadioU and TVU didn’t promote the singles, though Jesusfreakhideout.com reviewed the album.
DON’T HIDE THE BROKEN PARTS I NEED TO SEE. I always found the evolution of Lifehouse to be a fascinating study of music niches. Lifehouse was never a cool band. Their post-grunge wasn’t dark enough. A commercialized gravelly-sounding voice was no Kurt Cobain or even Scott Stapp, nor was the band mainstream “butt rock” enough to be like Seether, Three Days Grace, or the other post-grunge bands of the ‘00s. Instead, the band went to the AAA stations to save their career. I remember OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder praising the AAA format as a sweet spot money-maker for songwriters. He said that the chart was “uniquely American.” Audiences aren’t rapt by these formulaic songs. It’s background music at a diner or hair salon. But tapping into this market and mastering the formula might get a number 1 hit from an otherwise Billboard top 10, or in Lifehouse’s case a top 10 for a low peak on the Hot 100. Music genre and marketing is interesting. Lifehouse was a TV-placement band, which made an uncool band cool. Why is the AAA chart uncool? I used to think it was because it was mellow, but there are a lot of cool artists who are maybe too mellow for the pop chart and too alternative for the adult contemporary format—Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens, for example. What about Lifehouse, then, made them perfect for the format?
Comments
Post a Comment