The Alternative Number Ones: The Lemonheads’ “Into Your Arms”

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.

I can't think of too many legitimate reasons to feel sorry for lead Lemonhead and notoriously flaky '90s alt-beefcake Evan Dando, a man who had a lot going for him and who mostly seems to be the source of his own problems. But here's something that's always struck me about Dando: He's written more than his share of starry-eyed fuzz-jams, but the songs that he wrote aren't the reason that the Lemonheads got famous. Dando's band earned their major-label deal at least partly on the strength of a sloppy, half-joking cover that they had to be convinced to record, and then they blew up because of a Simon & Garfunkel cover that Dando actively disdained. When the Lemonheads finally became MTV darlings and scored themselves a nice long stay at #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, they did it with "Into Your Arms," a song that the band's brand-new bassist brought over from one of his old projects. To his credit, Dando has never been all that grumpy about owing his popularity to songs that he did not write. He's got other things to worry about.

Evan Dando always took pains to let the world know that he didn't care about being famous. It wasn't a Kurt Cobain situation; he didn't radiate disgust for the idea that he'd have to go sing his songs in hockey arenas full of people who would've hated him in high school. It was more that he just shrugged at all the attention. He wanted to make his loose, sloppy sha-la-la vroom-twinkles, and he didn't care for the extra work that was involved in running a successful enterprise like the Lemonheads. He couldn't keep a band together, and tons of people cycled through tons of different Lemonheads lineups over the years. He was also into heroin and crack, and he wasn't too shy about that, despite his handlers' best efforts. But Dando was the right guy at the right time, and he was a magazine-cover fixture for a few years. His omnipresence turned off as many people as it turned on, and it served to obscure an extremely likable discography.