Modern Rock No. 1s: Toad the Wet Sprocket and "Fall Down"

Toad the Wet Sprocket adds some grit to their polished pop-rock sound and finds success in the alternative rock sphere with "Fall Down"

Toad the Wet Sprocket - “Fall Down”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 6 weeks (June 18 to July 23, 1994)

Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Green Day and “Longview”

Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Offspring and “Come Out And Play”

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• All-4-One - “I Swear” (10 total weeks beginning 5/21/94)

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Toad the Wet Sprocket is an interesting case study in the diffusion of modern rock music into the mainstream, especially as it relates to their success on the different Billboard charts.

When the band’s Fear album was released in the summer of 1991, two of its lead singles managed to crack the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100: “All I Want” (peaked at #15) and “Walk On The Ocean” (peaked at #18). The former did manage to crack the Modern Rock Tracks chart, but at a relatively low #22. “Walk On The Ocean” stayed strictly in the pop realm, failing to chart on alternative radio.

Later, in 1995, the band released a B-side collection titled In Light Syrup, which featured their pop-radio hit “Good Intentions,” a song that also benefited greatly from being a part of the soundtrack to the ‘90s hit TV show Friends. As with their tracks on Fear, “Good Intentions” was a top-20 hit on the Billboard Pop Airplay chart (it didn’t chart on the Hot 100 as it was not released as a commercial single), but on alternative radio, it only managed a #20 peak.

Somewhere in between the bookends of pop-radio success, Toad the Wet Sprocket tweaked their sound just enough to finally find the sweet spot on alternative radio, notching their first and only Modern Rock Tracks #1 hit, “Fall Down.”

It’s weird to me, because I don’t think “Fall Down” sounds wildly different than the band’s “pop” hits, so I can’t really explain why their biggest mainstream tracks didn’t resonate on alternative radio. Along the same lines, I can’t explain why “Fall Down” didn’t resonate on pop radio.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: “Fall Down” was still a pop “success” in the sense that the track peaked at #33 on the Hot 100, good enough to cement its status as a “top-40 hit” in the literal sense. And this might be a consequence of growing up in a town with a relatively homogenized set of radio stations that played closer to the mainstream than the “edgier” alternative sounds of the mid ‘90s, but I never heard “Fall Down” on the rock radio station in my hometown. I heard the other songs over and over and over again, even the older 1991 tracks, but “Fall Down” didn’t enter my bubble of awareness until the late ‘90s, when I started listening to stations outside my local sphere (grateful to London, Ontario’s FM 96 for being there to broaden my musical palette in the pre-internet days).

I suspect this issue didn’t plague larger markets; odds are good that, if your station was playing “All I Want,” they were likely putting “Fall Down” into heavy rotation as well. But even with that, it still strikes me as odd that “Fall Down” both succeeded in the alternative space yet failed to achieve the crossover success of the band’s other hit singles.

I wonder if placement in popular media helped as well. Whereas a song like “Good Intentions” became a pop phenomenon because of its placement with Friends, I wonder if “Fall Down” resonated more with the alternative crowd due to its placement on shows like My So-Called Life, a cult-classic show that resonated with a particular audience, though not necessarily a widespread, mainstream crowd.

“Fall Down” appeared in an episode of My So-Called Life related to drug abuse by the character Rayanne, played by AJ Langer, left.

And the song admittedly is the most angsty of the band’s hits, something that fit within the grunge and post-grunge aesthetic. Instrumentally, the song just has an “alternative sound” that feels rougher, grimier, and less polished than their other hits. There are moments where the backup vocals provide pop-adjacent harmonies and lean in that direction, and the guitar/drum combination teeters on the brink of comparison with bands like Gin Blossoms, but the song ultimately leans more toward rock than pop. For example, the guitar opens up with bigger, ringing chords during the chorus, contributing to the anthemic feel of the song while driving home the hard-rock edge that makes the track stand out.

Lyrically, lead singer Glen Phillips takes the band into somewhat darker territory than a pleasant walk on the ocean, diving into the breakdown of a once-popular girl who seems to be having a hard time getting out of her own way. He describes this idea in an interview with Songfacts Newsletter in 2022:

“[‘Fall Down’ was] loosely based on a woman - a girl at the time - in high school, who was rebelling against and living out people’s worst expectations of her. I think when you’re misunderstood there’s an urge sometimes to self-destruct as a form of rebellion. So, watching that happen and thinking about it.

The lyrics back up this interpretation, of course, referring to a girl who says she’s OK but still struggles with the best way to prove that she’s OK, ultimately leading her down a path full of indecision and regret. The vocal melody moves between low, tense lines in the verses and a powerful, charged chorus, reflecting the song’s lyrical themes of struggle and release:

She hates her life,
she hates her skin,
she even hates her friends
Tries to hold on to all the reputations she can't mend

The song struck a chord with alternative rock audiences and radio programmers, and it managed to stay atop the Modern Rock Tracks chart for a month and a half in the summer of 1994. “Fall Down” was the first single released off the band’s 1994 album Dulcinea, and the band would come back into the top 10 of the MRT chart with the album’s second single, “Something’s Always Wrong,” which peaked at #9. Ironically, the song has more of the pop stylings that made the band’s earlier hits mainstream successes, but it only reached a #41 peak on the Hot 100.

“Fall Down” stands out as one of Toad the Wet Sprocket’s most energetic and driving songs, and it managed to find its place at the top of the alternative charts by blending a harder edge to their instruments with their signature pop-centric melodic sensibilities. I can’t quite make sense out of how their “alternative” songs failed to resonate on pop radio like their earlier songs did, nor can I understand how their “pop” songs failed to resonate on alternative radio, but the fact that the band made an impression across all genres speaks to their ‘90s-era greatness and cements them among the omnipresent favorites of the era.

Rating: 8/10

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Chart Check

Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

I’m not saying “Fall Down” is worse than “Black Hole Sun,” because I think it’s an apples/oranges comparison, but it’s hard to believe that the latter never managed to crack the top of the MRT charts. I’ll rectify that in a future column. Otherwise, this week features the top-5 debut for Collective Soul and Blur, the final top-15 appearances for Sonic Youth and Crash Test Dummies, and Beck’s can of beer. And the Beastie Boys are here to set straight this Watergate.

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“Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden (#2):

This will be the subject of its own column in the near future…

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“Shine” by Collective Soul (#4):

Collective Soul hits the alternative rock charts for the first time with “Shine,” their debut single that peaked at #4 behind Toad the Wet Sprocket. For whatever reason, Collective Soul never reached #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Airplay charts, but they have seven #1 hits on the Mainstream Rock charts. The band is polarizing in some rock circles, but they continue to be a force in alternative rock and helped define the mid-’90s post-grunge movement into the mainstream, as evidenced by this track’s remarkable #11 peak on the Billboard Hot 100.

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“Girls & Boys” by Blur (#4):

In an alternate reality where Britpop became the predominant musical force in the U.S. in the mid 1990s, Blur likely would have hit #1 with “Girls & Boys.” The post-grunge wave in the U.S. pushed bands like Blur out of the consciousness of most alternative-rock listeners, and as a result Blur only managed a #4 peak with this really great track. The band would have two more top-10 alternative hits in the U.S., including one that inexplicably peaked at #6 in 1997 even though it’s arguably one of the best songs of the decade, but in the U.K. this would be the first of 18 consecutive top-20 hits for the band.

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“Bull In The Heather” by Sonic Youth (#13):

Sonic Youth definitely played a significant role pushing alternative rock into the mainstream in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and I respect their body of work, but I can’t say that I’m the biggest fan of “Bull In The Heather.” The track peaked at #13 behind Toad the Wet Sprocket, and that seems generous given the somewhat annoying and overly repetitive lyrical stylings of Kim Gordon on this track. Instrumentally, the song is pretty great, but Gordon is leaning toward Björk-level annoyance here.

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“Afternoons & Coffeespoons” by Crash Test Dummies (#13):

Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Crash Test Dummies return to the top 15 of the chart with “Afternoons & Coffeespoons,” a song that peaked at #66 on the Hot 100 and marked the end of the band’s success in the U.S. This track is pretty good, actually, another solid effort off the band’s album God Shuffled His Feet. The band would go on to score three more top-5 hits in Canada in the 1990s, but the lightning the band captured in a bottle on the U.S. charts disappeared after this song.

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“Sabotage” by Beastie Boys (#18):

Future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Beastie Boys hit what was, at the time, their alternative chart peak with “Sabotage,” ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top 500 singles of all time. It peaked at #18 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, a relatively low position but, admittedly, radio stations were having a hard time classifying the band’s sound into genres or sub-genres. By the end of the decade into the 2000s, the band would formally slot themselves into the alternative camp, and within 10 years would score a #1 hit on the chart.

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“Beercan” by Beck (#27):

Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Beck returned to the MRT chart with “Beercan,” a relatively meh song that peaked at a fairly low but perfectly reasonable #27 behind “Fall Down.” This would be Beck’s last charting single before the release of 1996’s Odelay, an album that would change the course of alternative rock and help cement Beck’s status as a pioneer of the genre.

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