“I’m not an expert on Spotify but, you know, one of those ‘Monday Moods’ or whatever the fuck they do.” Malkmus himself was under this impression, too: “I heard it was on a playlist or something,” he says, nonchalant. Online, people have been casually wondering this on places like Reddit and Twitter, with a prevailing theory being that the song must have been featured on a prominent Spotify playlist, and then simply snowballed from there. So how did this happen, exactly? And better yet, should this have happened? Quickly, and without any obvious reason, it stopped being a rarity and started to become a standard, appearing in coffee shops and bars and gluten-free bakeries. The type that a bakery employee might sneak onto the work playlist as a subtle way to class the joint up.īut then something bizarre happened: In the last few years, the song has rocketed up to become number one on Pavement’s Spotify page, ending up with over 28 million plays to date, seven million more than “ Cut Your Hair,” a legitimate and enduring ’90s hit. A curveball to put on a mix and raise an eyebrow. It was then that the castoff song began its new life, slowly becoming a minor fan favorite - a single-worthy non-album track that indicated just how rich the band’s discography was. The song remained one that only the real heads knew until 2008, when it was included on Matador’s expanded reissue of Brighten The Corners, alongside a large amount of the extra material recorded for that album by producer/engineers Mitch Easter and Bryce Goggin.
“Then it was playing and I thought, ‘Well, this is a cool place.’ Little did I know it was just on Spotify or something.”Īt that point, the track was still a deep cut - a B-side recorded during the sessions for 1997’s Brighten The Corners, but not released until 1999, when it was thrown onto the CD-only Spit On A Stranger EP, a detail so remote that even Malkmus had forgotten about it until he was reminded.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh, they’re playing “ Tumbling Dice” by Rolling Stones,’” he remembers now, over the phone. The guitar-playing that was choogling over the speakers was partially his own, but in the few moments before the vocals kicked in, his brain couldn’t place it. He was with one of his daughters, stopping at a gluten-free bakery (“Very Portland,” Malkmus jokes) when the Pavement song “Harness Your Hopes” came on - a song he had written and recorded more than two decades prior while leading the band. A couple years ago, Stephen Malkmus walked into a shop and didn’t recognize himself.
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