Modern Rock No. 1s: Live and "Selling The Drama"

As grunge acts dominated the 1994 music landscape, record companies rushed to cash in on the wave. Enter Live, whose grunge-adjacent sound rocketed them to the top the charts with "Selling The Drama."

Live - “Selling The Drama”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 3 weeks (May 21 to June 4, 1994)

Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Morrissey - “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get”

Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Green Day - “Longview”

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• All-4-One - “I Swear”

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Way back when I wrote about Nirvana’s “takeover” of the music landscape with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I discussed how odd it was that it took another three years for “grunge” as a musical style to become omnipresent in the mainstream and dominating the top of the Modern Rock charts. When I first decided to tackle this project, I assumed Nirvana’s late 1991 arrival was going to be the beginning of a wave of grunge #1 hits. That wave of #1 hits never happened.

What I learned over the course of covering dozens of Modern Rock Tracks #1 hits is that any movement, no matter how earth-shattering, takes time to reverberate across the landscape. Indeed, even though Nirvana would chart two additional #1 Modern Rock hits with “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies,” it wasn’t until their In Utero album came out in late 1993 that this flavor of alternative rock became mainstream gold. Even though Nevermind was a game-changer in 1991-92, the game takes time to change, and if you look back at my reviews covering late 1991 through now, it’s clear how slowly that shift took place.

Even the other bands now considered “godfathers of grunge” — acts like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains — never reached the top of the Modern Rock charts in grunge’s heyday of 1991-92; they had to wait for the release of their follow-up albums to achieve that level of success. The change was coming but it took time for these acts and their sound to permeate and take hold. I didn’t hear anything from Pearl Jam’s Ten album until at least 1993, when a neighborhood friend named Jeremy ironically took a liking to “Jeremy,” and we discussed the lyrical craziness of someone biting a recess lady’s breast.

I’m not going to tell you that the bands featured in this space over the coming weeks and months are undeserving of the top spot in the Modern Rock Tracks chart, but I will tell you that this incoming wave of chart-topping acts is, without a doubt, a reaction to the 1991-92 emergence of grunge rock, and record labels’ desperate search to capitalize on that wave with any musical act that sounded remotely like Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. Ironically, this wave of music, inspired by grunge, became known colloquially as post-grunge, a style that presumably offers a more polished, mainstream-accessible sound than its predecessors in the initial grunge wave.

The first splash of this post-grunge alternative wave began with an act from, of all places, York, Pa., hardly a hotbed of new and upcoming musical talent. Regardless of their origins, the men who formed a musical act known as Live managed to parlay their unique alt-rock sound into an album fit for mass consumption, and with the release of Throwing Copper, Live shot into the stratosphere with their first Modern Rock chart topper, “Selling The Drama.”

To be fair, “Selling The Drama” sounds less like the grunge godfathers and more like former Modern Rock Tracks #1 act Gin Blossoms, with gentle acoustic guitar flourishes accenting pulse-pounding refrains and brash lyrics filled with images of burning and fearing flames and wheels turning. No one’s confusing this with “Heart-Shaped Box” in terms of how closely it resembles the grunge aesthetic, but it is close enough — and given quite a bit of spit shine and polish with big-time record-label cash — that it could be marketed within the same audiences while also appealing to others who might just be dipping their toe into alternative rock.

Much ink was spilled over this post-grunge transition when Throwing Copper celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2024, and this article by Paolo Ragusa of Consequence of Sound magazine does a tremendous job explaining why the music world was ready for a move toward — and away from — the grunge sound of the early ‘90s:

Live released their standout third album, ‘Throwing Copper,’ on April 26, 1994, as a heavy shadow lay over the rock world. Kurt Cobain had died a few weeks before. Rock felt wounded, and audiences were ready to embrace a lighter take on grunge. …

Live imbued their harder sound with moments of sun-kissed beauty, the soft warmth often coming from (Ed) Kowalczyk and Chad Taylor’s guitars. … Unlike Nirvana or Alice in Chains, Live sounded less indebted to the punk and metal of the ’80s. When they accelerate, it’s not to conjure a frenzy; it’s in service of a greater release.

This potent mixture of grunge’s vaguely-threatening energy with a softer, more accessible exterior is what makes up the post-grunge appeal. Jerry Harrison producing the album — his second for Live — helped root these songs on planet Earth while letting their anthemic sound soar off into sky. Toggling between a feedback-ridden, distorted presentation and clarity is a tough task, and by doing it so deftly, Harrison had his part in shaping an influential sound.

“Selling The Drama” is not the best song on the album, nor was it the most popular. In the not-too-distant future of Chart Chat, we’ll be exploring the more persistently present hit off Throwing Copper in great detail. But even though it may not be the best Live has to offer, it is still a banger of a song, and one of the first tracks I encountered as my Musical Awakening™️begins to take shape during the back half of 1994.

Honestly, it’s the lyrical brashness of Live’s tracks that initially endeared me to the band. Prior to 1994, you’d get your occasional cuss word or deftly positioned double entendre through the censors on mainstream radio, but with the push toward grunge and post-grunge, previously verboten words suddenly became omnipresent in lyrics. Indeed, Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” prominently discusses the eating of cancer, while the B-side to the band’s “All Apologies” pulls no punches with the brazen title “Rape Me.” The phrasing used by Gen Xers to describe politics and perceived societal slights became more overt and direct, and indeed, as we’ll see in the Chart Check section below, sex itself was sold not with double entendres, but with a very direct and effective use of the “F word.”

Live embraced this with “Selling The Drama,” a song ostensibly referring to the influence of politics and religion on the masses, and on the narrator’s desire to avoid the trappings of those messages and take their own path in life. Live alludes to rape in a colloquial sense, a turn of phrase intending to refer to the mental harm caused by persistent negative messaging, rather than the despicable physical act.

and to love: a god
and to fear: a flame
and to burn a crowd that has a name
and to right or wrong
and to meek or strong
it is known, just scream it from the wall

…

hey, now we won't be raped
hey, now we won't be scarred like that

The slow build from Kowalczyk and Taylor of muted guitar chords to the explosion of instruments and lyrics in the refrain mirrors acts like Gin Blossoms and former MRT chart #1 artist Soul Asylum, but Live seeks to call out bigger societal problems and address them with a stated desire to be independent and free. It’s almost as if Live is answering Cracker’s call to fix the things wrong with the world, channeling the teen angst of the early ‘90s into sincere attempts to change the status quo going forward.

I liked “Selling The Drama” at the time, though it quickly became an overplayed staple on my local rock and mainstream radio stations. Looking back at 30 years of history with Live and alternative music in general, the song still holds its own, but its position among the best songs of the ‘90s feels less certain now than I thought it did in 1994-95. I can think of at least a half dozen Live songs, released both before and after “Selling The Drama,” that deserve higher praise and a longer-lasting legacy.

“Selling The Drama” would spend three weeks atop the Modern Rock Tracks chart before giving way to a flood of new and upcoming U.S. alt-rock pioneers who would shape the modern rock and mainstream zeitgeist over the mid to late 1990s. Throwing Copper is still regarded as one of the best albums of the 1990s, and would be the springboard for several more singles from Live through the end of 1994 into 1995. It won’t be too much longer before Live is back in this space, and even when they’re not hitting the top of the charts, they’ll still be a significant presence in this space for at least another decade.

Rating: 6/10

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Chart Check

Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

The Pretenders make their final appearance on the MRT charts with a sexy song about night sex. Presumably. Also worth noting this week, Frente! covers New Order, Erasure wants to be with you and live in harmony, Counting Crows wax philosophical about the transition to adulthood, and Meat Puppets hit their commercial peak with a song about swirling water. And while Trent Reznor’s existence is flawed, he still wants to fuck you like an animal. Whatever gets you closer to God, I guess…

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“Night In My Veins” by Pretenders (#2):

The Pretenders were a chart force for more than a decade, including several hits on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, but that run ended with “Night In My Veins,” which peaked at #2 on the chart behind Live. Chrissie Hynde and the gang left on a high note with an up-tempo track about sexy escapades at night (not sure if it’s “the night” that’s getting “slipped in” under her skin, but I could be overthinking it). The Pretenders are still performing to this day, and released their latest album Relentless in September 2023.

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“Round Here” by Counting Crows (#7):

Adam Duritz and Counting Crows wax philosophical in “Round Here,” the second single off their debut album August and Everything After. Duritz explained in interviews that the song is about being at a crossroads in life, deciding whether to continue on a particular path or leave it all behind. It’s about the transition from childhood to adulthood, though done in a poetic cadence that escaped my teenage brain at the time. It resonated with a good many people, though, and managed a #7 peak on the Modern Rock Tracks chart behind “Selling The Drama.”

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“Always” by Erasure (#8):

British synth mainstay Erasure hit their ‘90s commercial peak in the U.S. with “Always,” an omnipresent earworm of electronic music that managed a #8 peak on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was the band’s highest-charting song on the Hot 100 in the 1990s, peaking at #20. I’m not sure what’s going on in the music video, but the song itself was a hit both on radio and in dance clubs. Erasure would continue to make waves on the dance pop charts well into the 2000s, but this single marked the end of their mainstream crossover success.

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“Backwater” by Meat Puppets (#11):

Given the omnipresence of “Backwater” on pretty much any ‘90s alternative rock channel, I was surprised to see that the Meat Puppets’ highest charting single topped out at #11 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart behind Live. The song was a modest crossover success, hitting #47 on the Hot 100 in 1994 as well. This track, off the band’s eighth studio release (they formed in 1980), did manage a #2 peak on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, and they would have two others that would chart in the top 30 on that survey, but the group never found the same level of chart success after this. The band continues to release albums and perform, with their latest release coming in 2019, titled Dusty Notes.

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“Closer” by Nine Inch Nails (#11):

Future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Nine Inch Nails begins an oddly anomalous string of four consecutive #11 peaks on the MRT chart with their ‘90s magnum opus, “Closer.” The song may have charted lower than its popularity due to the significant censoring required to make it radio friendly, but it was the music video that propelled it to its highest heights. Though music scholars and historians more learned than I might quibble, I’d argue this track pushed industrial alternative rock to the mainstream, and the ripple effects of this song’s presence will start to become very obvious over the coming months and years as more industrial-flavored acts dot the landscape.

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“Bizarre Love Triangle” by Frente! (#12):

I may have one or two followers who are big-time New Order fans, so I’ll be curious their thoughts on this Frente! cover of “Bizarre Love Triangle,” one of New Order’s best ‘80s tracks. There’s a stripped-down sweetness to this version of the song, one that feels oddly placed alongside Nine Inch Nails yet is a refreshing palate cleanser in a deluge of heavy industrial and grunge-adjacent rock. This song peaked at #49 on the Hot 100 as well as its #12 peak on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.

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