Song:One Week
Album:Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits 1991-2001
Unlike a lot of Canadian groups, the Barenaked Ladies had success in the US when One Week topped the charts in 1998. They are legends in Canada especially in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough where they grew up. Ed Robertson and Steven Page went to the same school. But they didn't know each other until they met at a restaurant following a Peter Gabriel concert. They became friends because they had similar taste in music. Then they started playing together while working as summer camp counselors. While attending a Bob Dylan concert, they got bored and made snarky comments to each other. Meanwhile, Robertson's band was supposed to do a battle of the bands for charity. But the band broke up. Robertson forgot about the gig. When they called to remind him, he said the band name had changed to Barenaked Ladies. Then he called Page to get him to do the gig. Like a lot of their early gigs, it was mostly improvised and Robertson was very good at improvising jokes. Then they became a band by adding brothers Andy (percussion) and Jim (bass) Creeggan. They went on tour with Corky and the Juice Pigs. When Andy Creeggan went to South America on a student exchange trip, he was replaced by Tyler Stewart. Toronto's CITY-TV had a video booth called Speaker's Corner. This is years before Youtube. When Barenaked Ladies performed Be My Yoko Ono on Speaker's Corner, they became local sensations. This eventually led to a deal with Sire Records in 1992. Before that, they released music independently including a cover of Bruce Cockburn's Lovers In A Dangerous Time and If I Had $1,000,000. And of course there was the time they were removed from a Toronto City Hall New Year's Eve concert when a staffer told Mayor June Rowlands that the name Barenaked Ladies was offensive. That nonsense made them even bigger in Toronto. Robertson says the story was big because it was a slow news week. The whole point of signing with a major label was to break in the US. But it took a few years to do that with the 1998 album Stunt and the single One Week which topped the Billboard Hot 100. Robertson wrote the song and does the rapping which is mostly pop culture nonsense. Page sings the chorus. By this time, Kevin Hearn replaced Andy Creeggan and then Hearn was diagnosed with leukemia and was unable to tour. They hired musicians for touring and Hearn returned after treatment. Though Barenaked Ladies continued to be popular in Canada, their US success was short lived. And Warner/Reprise/Sire released them after the 2003 album Everything To Everyone. You can get all their hits on this comp. Barenaked Ladies started their own label Desperation Records. And they continue to release new music even after Page's 2009 departure. He has recorded solo and he hosted the TV series The Illegal Eater. The Barenaked Ladies currently record for Vanguard and their latest CD Fake Nudes was released in 2017. And Barenaked Ladies was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in March. Here's the video for One Week by Barenaked Ladies.
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