Gin Blossoms 'Hey Jealousy'

Chart Peak: 24

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The Gin Blossoms hail from Arizona and comprise Robin Wilson, Jesse Valenzuela, Phillip Rhodes, Bill Leen & Doug Hopkins... 'Hey Jealousy' is the group's first British Top 30 single.

An unfortunate problem of tense there: whilst Hopkins wrote this song and played on an early version of it, by the time the UK single was released he'd been fired from the band over the drink problem the song refers to and had committed suicide. Funnily enough I don't recall this getting much mention at the time though, perhpas because it wasn't the ideal way to launch a new act. Oh, and if you want to be really pedantic, they weren't called *the* Gin Blossoms, but they should have been.

I've mentioned already my experience listening to our then-local BBC station GLR, which had recently been reinvented by Matthew Bannister, shortly before he tried to do the same thing (against stronger resistance) over at Radio 1. And this is one of the handful of songs that most strongly reminds me of that time and that station because it was a big favourite there (and if I remember correctly, it did very well in an end-of-year listener poll) but it's not one I've heard much of since. With hindsight, their style - something of a blend of grunge and power-pop - was exactly sort of thing that was about to disappear from the UK market for the next few years, because it was the type most overshadowed by Britpop at the time when the UK and US markets were at their most divergent in my memory. Even though the band managed three more Top 40 hits before they disbanded, nothing ever got higher than this.

It's a type of music I myself soon tired of too, although at the time I rather enjoyed this and with a decade or so's perspective I've found myself coming round to it a little. I probably wouldn't like it at all if I hadn't liked it at the time, because anything I can imagine as a modern equivalent sets my teeth on edge, but there's something pleasingly solid and well-constructed about it. It's presumably intentional that the protagonist comes out of it looking like a useless idiot, and fortunately that makes the lack of brilliance here more appropriate. I'd count this among the songs I wouldn't have made the effort to hear again but didn't mind re-acquainting myself with.

Available on: New Miserable Experience