SONG OF THE DAY [#350]

'gravity' | embrace

true story: i spent $30 [$30!!] on embrace's debut album, 'the good will out.'  this was in the days when you had to rely on the the british fishwraps [vox, Q, the NME, melody maker, etc] for information about new bands and albums.  and of course the only place you could really find those mags was at the virgin megastore or the occasional local cd store.  man, that's when CD shopping was adventure! i miss those days!

one of the bands i started hearing about in said magazines was a band called embrace.  from what i read, they sounded like a band i would really like.  according to the the band, they 'were bigger than the verve!' [heresy if there was, but hey, you gotta admire the chutzpah].  well, no, they weren't bigger than the verve, but they were pretty darn good.  'the good will out' was a really great album.  it was that perfect mix of arena-sized rockers and weepy ballads.  'all you good good people,' 'my weakness is none of your business,' 'higher sights,' and 'come back to what you know' were all highly mighty songs that found their way on to the pretty much every mixtape from the era.   all signs pointed to a bright future.  

well, their second album was a huge flop.  [i don't think i've ever even heard it.]  the critics had a field day with lots of  'pride before the fall' talk and what not [critics--who needs 'em?].  but honestly, it wasn't a very good album and  i thought i'd heard the last of them.  

a few years past and by some weird fluke, divine intervention, serendipitous moment, or a good old tap on the shoulder by god's knuckle, my best buddy chris paltrow co-wrote a little song called 'gravity'  with embrace and embrace recorded it.  well, being as chris paltrow has the paltrow touch, 'gravity' was a massive hit back in the UK and embrace, once nearly deleted from the collective british memory, was back in the game.  for me it was great news!  i had been hoping to hear more from them.   but as with pretty much any band who finds sudden fame for the second time, embrace's success brought a whole new group of music virgins with an under-developed knowledge of music history, clamoring out of the darkness.  inevitably, those who had not heard embrace before 'gravity' immediately accused embrace of coldplay thievery [as if anyone would want to steal coldplay's sound] and all sorts of silly nonsense.  truth is, 'the good will out' preceded 'parachutes' by a couple of years, so i don't really get how anyone could accuse embrace of theft when embrace was doing it first.  if anything, mr. stubbly stole from embrace.  yeah.

i love embrace.  always have, always will.  if you've not heard them before, i hope you love them too.

→ embrace: gravity | video
→ embrace: ashes | video
→ embrace: free ride [from the 'all you good good people' e.p.]
→ embrace: my weakness is none of your business
→ embrace: nature's law | video
→ embrace: target