No Doubt - "Sunday Morning"

this is an awesome song.

i'm a sucker for the choppy jumpy chord chorus thingy.

this still bangs

perfect song

yeah, i heard this randomly recently and i liked it! the only good no doubt song imo.

I like it far more now than I did in the '90s, when I didn't even consider it a highlight of Tragic Kingdom ...

everyone otm, great song with a excellent vocal performance by stefani. can't believe it was the 6th single off that record, though it is definitely the one i'm most likely to hear in the wild 20 years later

damn 6 singles, i knew it was big but i kinda forgot how big

Yeah, me too honestly. fwiw the fifth single ("Happy Now?") was a nonstarter, didn't get a video or any airplay as far as i can remember. The "Sunday Morning" video definitely feels like a "this album cycle has been absolutely exhausting, can we do something that requires very little effort?" thing

I recall 'Just a Girl' and 'Don't Speak' being the two big ones off Tragic Kingdom, and possibly 'Spiderwebs' after that. I didn't see the video to 'Sunday Morning' until about 7 years after it came out. I didn't even know that 'Happy Now?' was a single... what was the other one!?

excuse me mr.

Yeah, I didn't know that was a single either. Tragic Kingdom clearly had more longevity in the US than it did in the UK!

No Doubt was (is? idk) a really good band

"hella" good one might say

Rock Steady was probably their second most successful album here after Tragic Kingdom ... the album in between seemed to sink like a stone.

Rock Steady didn't seem to ever really take off in the UK despite having three top 20 singles. I think they carried over that success to the Best Of which ended up becoming a really big success for them.

Is Tragic Kingdom seen as their best album overall? Rocksteady is the only one I have.

Yeah, Rock Steady was far from a blockbuster smash here, but it was still a more successful era for them than the LP before, and the period I recall them being the most "visible" since Tragic Kingdom. I don't really know which LP is considered their best... Tragic Kingdom was the "breakthrough" one.

i think return of saturn is pretty easily their best album. the non-singles on tragic kingdom are rough

Gwen Stefani is the least interesting element in this band; a few solo songs aside, her yelps and boring melodies never excited me, a cloddish Lene Lovich-Cyndi Lauper heir.

O__o

then again at the time I considered those Tragic Kingdom singles menaces, not least because radio played them all the fucking time.

I like "Hella Good" and "A Simple Kind of Life" and the Ocasek and Prince songs on RTS.

there's a prince song on Rock Steady too ("Waiting Room")

fwiw the fifth single ("Happy Now?") was a nonstarter, didn't get a video or any airplay as far as i can remember.

I was certain it had a video but can't find it anywhere on yt so maybe not.

Yeah, it had 6 singles, although 3 of the them seemed a lot more inescapable than the other 3.

that's the one I mean -- I got my abbreviation wrong

xpost

I have no memory of Happy Now?

i love the tempo changes in Sunday Morning

I think in their Behind The Music episode there was a section where they discussed "Happy Now" with some live footage, so maybe that's why I assumed there was a video.

absolutely great chorus on this. middle 8 a complete filler but doesn't spoil it.

spiderwebs has a better middle 8 (and a backwards guitar solo!) but is not a better song.

doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot

(reviving this thread for a trivial comment, b/c it’s my favorite No Doubt song and there’s no general thread for them)

Surprised to learn that Tragic Kingdom and Return of Saturn are each 14 tracks and 60 mins. long… that seems hella long for a “normal” album, even in the days of peak CD bloat. (Their 1992 debut is also 14 tracks, but has a shorter runtime.)

tragic kingdom also does the same thing bloodsugarsexmagik does - burying the breakout ballad at some unceremonious track number to give credence to the idea that such songs are not what these party animals are truly about. big long albums that go about themselves like nothing has changed from their predecessors.

i think return of saturn is probably closer to 54 minutes without the hidden track, but yeah i mean it's still there

Ah, I didn’t realize the last track is a 10-minute “hidden” instrumental, that’s interesting…

I’ve haven’t heard Tragic Kingdom as an album in forever, like I’m surprised “Spiderweb” is Track 1… feels like bursting out of the gate too fast or something.

great song. just now figured out it was Terry Hall in the video!

in my mind, their first three albums were released like 1995/1998/2002 but in reality it was 1995/2000/2001! interesting that they took so long for Return of Saturn and so short for Rock Steady and then... hiatus

Tragic is a 1995 album that doesn’t feel to me like ‘95, I guess because it was such a slow burn. “Don’t Speak” was in heavy MTV rotation in late 96… and they released the final single in ‘98(!)

that’s some appetite for destruction sh1t

Not only that, "Just A Girl" was a last-minute add to the film Clueless (not on the soundtrack album), which came out in July '95!

Tragic Kingdom itself being released three months later.

Apparently they self-released an album in March ‘95, even though they were between albums on Interscope, with the most unappealing title/cover art for a major band:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beaconstreetcollection.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/Beaconstreetcollection.jpg

i have two no doubt albums sourced from (uk) charity shops. somehow, it's the first two, pre-fame.

Gwen's knife work in the video is terrible

Tragic is a 1995 album that doesn’t feel to me like ‘95, I guess because it was such a slow burn. “Don’t Speak” was in heavy MTV rotation in late 96… and they released the final single in ‘98(!)

― rendered nugatory (morrisp), Monday, 15 April 2024 14:30 (seven hours ago) link

The success of "just a girl" itself was a slow burn, it didn't hit any charts until almost two months after it was released. It's in the billboard 100 for the first time in December '95, but it doesn't peak until the following April. I was in 8th grade at the time, and this also tracks with my memory, that it started as a minor hit and just kind of never sent away for my entire second semester lol

made a mistake, "just a girl" hit its billboard peak in May '96, five months after it first entered that chart

I remember hearing it first in Romy and Michelle’s Reunion, which I must’ve seen around May 97. Seemed like Tragic Kingdom was absolutely everywhere at the time. Every CD headphones set in every music store had an option to listen to it. I loved it but (as a young person) I found it hard to look behind my repulsion for Don’t Speak - I still find it kind of unlovable

i know just what you're saying