The Alternative Number Ones: Blind Melon’s “No Rain”

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.

We had memes before we had a proper internet, and the Bee Girl was definitely a meme. The Bee Girl, maybe more than Blind Melon themselves, was the reason that Blind Melon's "No Rain" took off in 1993. Blind Melon's self-titled debut came out in September 1992, and it was pretty well ignored for about a year. But when the Bee Girl popped up in the "No Rain" video, tap-dancing and holding back tears and showing the indomitable power of the human spirit, she became an omnipresent MTV fixture, and she dragged Blind Melon into the spotlight behind her. Blind Melon didn't perform at the 1993 VMAs, but the Bee Girl did. The Bee Girl was a star.

A different version of the Bee Girl appeared on the cover of the Blind Melon album. That's an old photo of Blind Melon drummer Glen Graham's sister Georgia, from when she acted in a school play back in the '70s. When Blind Melon were getting ready to release their debut, someone found that old picture and joked that it would make a good album cover, and then the joke became a reality. For the "No Rain" video, Samuel Bayer, the same director who made Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" clip, built a fantastical little fable around that photo, and he found an extremely cute little kid to bring the image to life. Bayer's only motion picture is the 2010 Nightmare On Elm Street reboot, and that thing sucks butts. But just between his "Teen Spirit" and "No Rain" clips, Bayer made a serious impact on the brains of an entire generation of kids. I was one of them.