The Alternative Number Ones: Belly’s “Feed The Tree”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Belly represented the '90s alt-rock dream in action. A bunch of musicians with long histories on the underground fringes get together to form a new band, and they bring a sparkling and accessible new sound that doesn't shy away from the weird, intense left-of-center tendencies of their previous bands. They sign to a major label, land in the MTV Buzz Bin, and sell a half-million copies of their debut album. Pretty soon, they've got a handful of songs that middle schoolers will sing while they're playing HORSE out on the playground. I know this because I was singing Belly songs with my friends out on the eighth-grade playground. We didn't think it was weird because it really wasn't weird, or at least it shouldn't have been. But the societal forces that could turn Belly songs into eighth-grade playground singalongs couldn't last.

We still have buzz bands, and we presumably still have eighth-grade singalongs, but those two things don't interact that often. If kids are out there right now singing together, it might be Chappell Roan or Kendrick Lamar or Morgan Wallen or something. That's not inherently worse than if they were all out there singing Mk.gee or Wishy or Friko or whatever, but it's different. If you happened to be in eighth grade during the great early-'90s alt-rock boom, then you might've grown up with some unsustainable utopian ideas about the way that this shit is supposed to work.

Belly didn't become gigantic world-conquering arena-rockers, but that wasn't the dream, at least in the way that I understand the dream. The dream was to make a decent living, perform for excited crowds, and maybe play a small part in shaping the culture of a particular moment. Belly did that. The moment didn't last for long, and neither did Belly. Unlike the '90s alt-rock bands who did become gigantic world-conquering arena-rockers, Belly's music has never been canonized. They're not in any hall of fame. But if you were the right age to sing along with Belly songs on the playground, then a sudden encounter with a song like "Feed The Tree" might be enough to send you deep into your own memories. If not, then it's still a really good song.

I can't sit here and tell you that Belly were one of my favorite bands of the early '90s. They weren't. They were a band that I liked a bunch. They were on the radio a lot, and I was always happy to hear them. I was one of the half-million people who bought their album Star, though my cassette copy might've been used; I forget. When they got around to making a second album, I'd moved on, and it seems like the rest of the world had, too. But if Belly were playing within a 90-minute radius of my house tomorrow, I would be in the crowd, probably on an unstuck-in-time head-trip. When I was having formative experiences, Belly were there, in the background, playing on someone's boombox. I probably have the same relationship to Belly that some people have to REO Speedwagon or whatever. I cannot write about them without nostalgia. That's probably a gift and a curse.

This doesn't have anything to do with Belly, but walk with me here: Last year, almost the entire Stereogum staff went to Las Vegas for Best Friends Forever, an entire festival dedicated to circa-2000 emo and its various tributaries. I did a backstage video interview with Piebald, a band that I loved when I was in college, and then I saw them play an extremely fun set full of rippers that I hadn't heard in forever. After the set, I saw those guys backstage, and I did some light gushing -- something like, "Yo, you guys kicked ass! That took me back!" In general good humor, one of the Piebald guys was like, "Thanks! I hope it took you forward, too." (That's probably not a direct quote, but it was words to that effect.) I had to pause for a moment. Maybe I'd said the wrong thing. Maybe Piebald don't want to take me back.

It's a funny thing because Piebald never broke up. They've been through periods of inactivity, but they're still a band, and they're still making new music. This was an entire festival dedicated to a moment that has passed. Piebald were on the bill, and they belonged. They knew it, too. But they don't necessarily want to be considered relics of the past, and that's fair. I would like to believe that a Piebald song like "Long Nights" would still hit hard even if I didn't hear it when I was much younger than I am today, but I don't know.

By that same token, I'm going to try to write the rest of this column about Belly without slipping into childhood-reverie mode, but it's going to be tough. Maybe more than any other band that I've covered in this column, Belly occupy a particular place in my memory. That's probably not fair to them. Belly are a band again now, and fully one third of their catalog is music that's come out in the past decade. Even when we're talking about the old songs, those are living documents, not windows to some middle-aged guy's ancient memories. But I'm the middle-aged guy, and my ancient memories are hard to shake. Those memories have a lot to do with my vision of the '90s alt-rock dream that Belly represent. They probably don't see it that way, but this is my column.

When Belly's biggest hit topped the Billboard Modern Rock chart, they were a new band, and frontwoman Tanya Donelly was still in her twenties. But Belly had deep roots in the New England underground, and their story goes back to a time when a band like Belly could've never been radio staples. Donelly's parents were rootless bohemian types, and she spent much of her childhood all around the country. Eventually, though, they settled on Rhode Island's Aquidneck Island, and Donelly's mother married the father of her best friend. Before too long, Donelly's best friend-turned-stepsister also became her bandmate. That's how Throwing Muses started.

Tanya Donelly's stepsister is Kristin Hersh, and she's a genius. Donelly and Hersh are almost exactly the same age. Donelly is actually a month older, but Hersh was the one who took control. Donelly's mother is also named Kristin, which probably made things confusing. Years later, Donelly told Rolling Stone, "We were cute when we were little, but then Kristin developed physically very young, and I didn’t develop -- or grow, really -- until I was literally about 16. I was such a runt. So there was this period of time where she looked like a woman, and I was a homunculus... Sometimes people would literally think that because my mother’s name was Kristin that [Hersh] was my mother. I know it sounds insane, but it actually happened."

Tanya Donelly and Kristin Hersh formed Throwing Muses in the early '80s, when both of them were in high school. Donelly and Hersh grew up together, but Hersh was the unquestioned leader of the band. At the very beginning, they were known as Kristin Hersh And The Muses. As both a singer and songwriter, Hersh was a towering figure. She still is. Hersh writes evocative, intoxicating stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and she sings in this throaty howl that I can't really compare to any singer who has ever existed. I've seen Hersh play solo a few times, and whenever I do, she makes the rest of the room feel like it's out of focus. I don't think I've ever had more than a couple of beers at a Kristin Hersh show, but it always feels like a hallucinatory episode. If you're in a band with Kristin Hersh, you're probably going to fade into the background, at least to some extent.

Throwing Muses' sound didn't really fit into any particular subgenre, other than I guess what was then known as college rock. The band was sometimes punchy and sometimes swirly, and it was always built around Hersh's presence. Donelly played guitar, sang backup, and occasionally stepped to the front of the stage to sing a song she'd written. Throwing Muses self-released an early EP and a cassette, and their song "Sinkhole" became a regional college-radio hit. In 1986, the band moved to Boston, the closest big city, and they became a big part of the regional underground. Both Donelly and Hersh were 19 when Throwing Muses became the first American band to sign to the British label 4AD, and they were both 20 when the Muses released their self-titled debut. Tanya Donelly wrote exactly one song on that LP. It's called "Green," and it's really good.

Throwing Muses recorded their first album with Gil Norton, a British producer who was probably best-known at the time for his work on Echo & The Bunnymen's Ocean Rain. These days, Norton is most famous for his work with Pixies, another Boston band who frequently shared stages with Throwing Muses. (Pixies' highest-charting Modern Rock single is 1989's "Here Comes Your Man," which peaked at #3. It's a 9. Norton produced that one.) In the next five years, Throwing Muses released four more albums. They always got love from critics, but they never sold much. Even on Modern Rock radio, Throwing Muses never got much more than light rotation. (Throwing Muses' highest-charting Modern Rock single, 1989's "Dizzy," peaked at #8. It's a 9.) Tanya Donelly never wrote more than a song or two per album.

In the late '80s, Donelly started a side project called the Breeders with Pixies bassist Kim Deal, another person who was stuck playing second banana in a great Boston alt-rock band. They'd become close friends when Pixies and Throwing Muses toured together. A few years ago, Donelly told Stereogum, "The first time [Kim and I] started playing together, a lot of that was just because we wanted to hang out together... We had this five-minute plan that we were going to make indie-dance music, and we could not pull it off. Fifteen minutes into our first session, we were done with that idea."

Instead, the Breeders recorded Pod, a 1990 debut album written almost entirely by Kim Deal. In that Stereogum intervew, Donelly says, "Kim was really coming into her own as a songwriter at that time and became very prolific. The plan back then was that she would do the first Breeders album and I would write the second Breeders album. All of the songs from the first Belly album, when they were demoed, it actually says 'Breeders' on the reels because those songs were supposed to be the second Breeders album. But then the Pixies went on tour for a year and a half and I couldn’t wait that long, so that’s where Belly came from."

Pod is an absolute banger of a record that remains a weird-music classic to this day, but it wasn't exactly a smash. None of its songs made the Modern Rock charts. The Breeders wouldn't become a commercially successful entity until years later, when Donelly wasn't in the band anymore. (The Breeders' highest-charting Modern Rock single is 1993's "Cannonball," which peaked at #2. It's the most obvious 10.)

For a while, Tanya Donelly split her time between Throwing Muses and the Breeders, though she wasn't the principal figure in either band. By the time Throwing Muses recorded 1991's The Real Ramona, Donelly and Kristin Hersh were in a rough patch. Donelly told Rolling Stone, "Kristin and I weren’t really good for each other anymore. The producer actually set up a system where Kristin would come in during the day and I would come in at night. He said that we’d walk into the room as individuals, and there was musicality and energy, and if we were together, it just sank." Hersh wrote that album's lead single "Counting Backwards," which made it to #11. Donelly wrote and sang lead on "Not Too Soon," which had a lot of the same tart sweetness of the songs that she'd later bring to Belly. "Not Too Soon" didn't chart, but today that song has way more Spotify streams than any other Throwing Muses track. It has more than any Belly song other than "Feed The Tree," too. I don't know how that happened. Maybe it had a minor TikTok moment or something.

Shortly after The Real Ramona came out, Donelly told Hersh that she had to leave Throwing Muses. Throwing Muses continued without Donelly, and they landed one more Modern Rock hit when their absolute banger "Bright Yellow Gun" reached #20 in 1995. Hersh also started putting out records on her own, and her 1994 solo debut Hips And Makers is an album that I love without reservation. Hersh continues to release music -- on her own, with Throwing Muses, and with her other band 50FootWave -- and everything that she does is worth checking out. Throwing Muses just put out an album last year, and it's awesome. Donelly has never rejoined Throwing Muses, but she'll sometimes get up onstage with them. Around the same time that she left Throwing Muses, Donelly also quit the Breeders, and her replacement was Kim Deal's twin sister Kelley. When the universe takes one beloved alt-rock sister act away, it gives us another.

After Donelly left Throwing Muses, a couple of her old high-school friends got in touch with her. Two brothers, guitarist Tom and drummer Chris Gorman, had both played in the Rhode Island hardcore band Verbal Assault in the '80s. I learn something new whenever I write one of these columns, and this time my main takeaway is that the two guys from Belly were in motherfucking Verbal Assault. That's a sick band. (Verbal Assault were playing reunion shows as recently as last year, but I don't know whether the Gorman brothers were part of that.) Chris Gorman found out that Donelly was out of Throwing Muses, and he asked her if she wanted to start a new band. She told Rolling Stone, "I took it as a sign." She called the new band Belly because it was one of her favorite words. Later on, "Belly" would also be the name of a cult-beloved Hype Williams movie and a fairly successful Toronto rapper, but Tanya Donelly presumably didn't have anything to do with that.

Belly released their 1992 debut EP Slow Dust on 4AD. They recorded their full-length Star with Gil Norton, Donelly's old Throwing Muses collaborator. Former Muses bassist Fred Abong played on the album but never became a full-time member of the band. Star came out early in 1993, and Donelly told SPIN that she wanted to find a woman to join the band: "I feel cooler if there's a woman onstage. I like gender balance." After the album's release, Gail Greenwood, a former member of Rhode Island hard rock band the Dames, joined Belly.

It's easy to imagine the songs on Star working as Throwing Muses or Breeders songs. Star has plenty of the tangled melodic and lyrical sensibilities as both of those bands, but it's recognizably its own thing, too. Donelly's Throwing Muses songs were usually that band's sweetest, softest moments. In Belly, some of those songs got a chance to work as something resembling pop music. You can hear a lot of that at work on "Feed The Tree," the first single and biggest hit from Star. It's an unlikely radio song, a weird little poetic meditation on an old man who's asking for consideration from a younger generation, but it's got such sugary momentum that it basically had to be a hit.

The title of "Feed The Tree" is a reference to death. Donelly told SPIN, "'Feed the tree' is like 'push up the dasies.' My mom is probably the only person who says it. The song says, 'Respect me, hang out with me until I die.'" That's pretty much what Donelly belts out on the chorus: "Take your hat off, boy, when you're talking to me, and be there when I feed the tree." On the verses, Donelly sings that she used to be this old man, and that she also used to be a "little squirrel" who "slammed her bike down the stairs." Before the last chorus, she signs off with this: "I'll only hurt you in my dreams." I can't really tell you what any of this means, but I can tell you that it got under my skin. The phrases and images would get stuck in my head: "Baby silvertooth, she grins and grins." When I was a kid, the mystery of lyrics like that was part of the appeal. I didn't really wonder what "Feed The Tree" was about. I just accepted the idea that I'd never know.

Tanya Donelly sings "Feed The Tree" so sweetly. Belly weren't the only early-'90s alt-rock band who paired breathy female vocals with serrated riffs; some of the contemporaneous Star reviews dismissed Belly for indulging in cliché. This seems pretty dumb to me, especially when the contrast powers a song as powerful and immediate as "Feed The Tree." On the chorus, there's an edge of sadness and desperation in Donelly's voice; I hear her fiercely empathizing with the old man. And "Feed The Tree" just has riffs and hooks to spare. It's hard and polished at the same time. On the intro, it starts out tough and ominous, but the sun breaks through when Donelly's voice arrives. The chorus is sticky and joyous enough for a bunch of eighth-grade boys to sing when they're playing basketball. (I hope I'm not imagining that memory. It's too good. There's at least some possibility that I just had "Feed The Tree" stuck in my head while playing basketball one day, but that's less fun.)

"Feed The Tree" hit the zeitgeist just right. Shortly after its release, the song was dominating modern rock radio, and Belly were making their TV debut on Letterman. (Dave: "I've just been told that this is the #1 college band in the country. Is that right? Bigger, even, than the Ohio State band?") "Feed The Tree" also crossed over to the Hot 100, though it only reached #95. In the UK, it was a top-40 hit. Belly's follow-up "Slow Dog" peaked at #17 on the Modern Rock chart, and I love that song. Apparently, it's about a woman who cheats on her husband and who's punished by having to wear a dead dog strapped to her back, but I did not pick up on that when I was 13. Later in the year, Belly made it back into the top 10 when the Star single "Gepetto" reached #8. (It's a 9.)

Star went gold. At the 1994 Grammys, Belly were nominated for Best New Artist, which they lost to Toni Braxton, and Star was up for Best Alternative Album, which it lost to U2's Zooropa. (Donelly to Stereogum: "We really did know we weren’t going to win. Like, we knew. We just knew because of who we were up against.") Belly toured the US with a very young Radiohead. It was supposedly a co-headlining tour, but Belly played last. Onstage, Thom Yorke would join them on the Star deep cut "Untogether." By the tour's end, the two bands came together onstage to play "Stay," the last song on Star. Have you heard "Stay"? Fucking beautiful song. I am now mad that I never got to see Belly and Radiohead play it together. (Radiohead's highest-charting Modern Rock hit, 1993's "Creep," peaked at #2. It's a 10.)

During the Star album cycle, Belly also toured with the Cranberries, a band that'll eventually appear in this column, and they covered "Are You Experienced?" on the 1994 Hendrix tribute album Stone Free. They recorded their 1995 sophomore album King with Glyn Johns, the veteran classic rock producer who'd worked with the Who and Led Zeppelin. Belly went for a harder, more intense sound on King. It got great reviews, and Belly appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. But for whatever reason, King just didn't get any traction commercially. I guess I was part of the problem, since I never heard the album before researching this column. Good album! Lead single "Now They'll Sleep" peaked at #17. Belly got one more song onto the Modern Rock chart when "Super-Connected" made it to #35, but that was it. When Belly got finished touring behind King, Donnelly decided that the band was done.

Donelly released her solo debut Lovesongs For Underdogs in 1997, and she came out with a few more over the years. Eventually, she started a new career as a postpartum doula, and she talks about that a bit in her Stereogum interview. Gail Greenwood played with L7 and Bif Naked, and she's now part of Gang Of Four's touring lineup. The Gorman brothers started a photography business. Belly got back together to play live shows in 2016, and they released the crowdfunded reunion album Dove in 2018.

In recent years, Belly have been trying to get control of their music and to pull it from Spotify, since the money is so meager, but they haven't been successful yet. That's bad news for them, but it might be good news for you, if it means it's easier for you to listen to Belly. You should listen to Belly. That's a good band. In their peak moment, Belly's intense, oblique sugar-rush giddiness made perfect sense. Their form of fuzz-pop remains anchored to that moment. In the years since then, lots of bands have attempted to revive that sound, but nobody ever gets it quite right. Maybe that sound just existed in the moment. Maybe it's not the sort of thing you can get back. The alt-rock dream couldn't last forever.

GRADE: 8/10

BONUS BEATS: Here's a video of Regina Spektor and her high-school band covering "Feed The Tree" at a 1998 talent show: