Good morning on this very warm Thursday and to another of our refreshing niche musical moments, known as Pop Essays. This week: we profile the follow up single from one of the 00s most notable one hit wonders…
- Artist: Daniel Powter
- Song: Free Loop
- Released: 07/11/2005
- Writers / Producers: Daniel Powter / Mitchell Froom / Jeff Dawson
- Highest UK Chart Position: Disqualified – Did Not Chart
- Chart Run: N/A
There are some artists, when they emerge with their first ever single, where it is pretty obvious that that song will be what they are forever known for, no matter how many other singles or albums they release.
Or, to put it in slightly more blunt terms: there are those artists where it is pretty obvious that, once the hype and cloud of smoke has died down around their launch, they are set for a long, ignimonious walk down the path marked “one hit wonder”.
It’s a loaded term, admittedly. But for an artist to effectively be sentenced to what most perceive is a millstone chained around their neck for the rest of what is left of their career is almost cruel. But broadly, from our learned experience, it’s dealt to them in one of four ways.
It is either by releasing a follow up to a novelty record that should absolutely not have been followed up (here’s looking at you, Las Ketchup, Los Del Rio and Lou Bega), by simply failing to match the genius or hype of their first big hit (t.A.T.u, Eamon), or worst of all, to be either the victim of blanket overplay to the point of turning audiences off the artist in question altogether, or for the song to become bigger than they are (Gnarls Barkley, Vanessa Carlton).
It is, we would argue, somewhere between these latter two categories that Canadian singer-songwriter, Daniel Powter, fell under. Cast your minds back this time 20 years ago, to the summer of 2005. If you switched on the radio or the music channels on TV at any given point between June and August, then the chances are you were no more than three minutes away from hearing or seeing either Daniel’s debut hit, “Bad Day” or James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”, getting an airing.
Both of them spent that summer dominating the airwaves and jostling for airplay supremacy, and subsequently the top of the chart, with Daniel’s hit log jammed at #2 behind James Blunt for the entire five week run that “You’re Beautiful” spent at number one in the UK. Still, “Bad Day” didn’t do very badly itself at all; it was still inside the top 10 come October, notching up a 13 week run in the upper echelon and eventually clocking up 38 weeks on the chart – over half a year – as well as being the eleventh best selling single of that year and being the most played song on radio in Europe for 2005.
It did however, doubtless put his label, Warner Bros, in something of a quandary. Namely because his self titled debut album was also out there and shifting platinum units. So it did raise the question of when, if ever, there would be a good time to release the second single. All involved were about to find out, when the dice was rolled for “Free Loop” to come out at the start of that November.
It’s a revelation to listen to again. It’s the kind of song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on mid 00s radio, whilst not being of that time either. It’s a lot more mellow sounding than “Bad Day”, almost like a classic Billy Joel track but with a modern sensibility to it, yet perfectly fitting in alongside the likes of Maroon 5, for instance.
Lyrically, it was a little misunderstood at the time, because of its chorus line: “And it’s hard for me to lose, in my life I’ve found / Only time will tell, and I will figure out / That we can baby, we can do a one night stand, yeah / And it’s hard for me to lose, in my life I’ve found / Outside your skin, right near the fire / That we can baby, we can change and feel alright”.
It sounds to all intents and purpose like a smoothly sung hook up line. But actually, Daniel explained that the song was about vocalising his feelings of uncertainty, of chasing his dream to make it in music, without knowing if it would pull off for him with the numerous personal challenges he had had to overcome in order to do so; amongst these, he’d at one point had to sell his piano in order to make his rent check.
The theme is definitely underlined more clearly in the video, which sees a young version of Daniel and the present day version of him pawing longingly over a piano in a music shop window, cutting to him becoming a regular pianist in a bar.
By the middle of October, “Free Loop” had been serviced to radio stations, but, BBC Radio 2 aside, it was in direct competition with still strong airplay for his previous single. That in itself was a tough factor, although not an insurmountable one. However, another more final situation that could doubtless have been avoided was what really sealed the single’s fate.
Those who think the bulging and ever shifting rule book set out by the Official Charts Company to record labels, DSPs and retailers, that is full of oftentimes confusing regulations regarding streaming and physical ratios would be wrong in thinking such problems are unique to this day and age. In fact, they’ve always been chaotic.
One particular rule that was enforced some time in the 90s to ensure of the integrity of the singles chart’s level playing field, was that of the presence of an artist’s previous single as an additional track or B-side of their new release. This was bought in primarily to curb the number of artists who were seeing inflated sales for second or third singles just by dint of their – in most cases – much better first single appearing on the new release, sometimes when the old single was still charting.
The hitherto best known example of this rule almost being breached was in the winter of 1998, when Boyzone released their festive offering for that year, “I Love The Way You Love Me”. On the B-side of one of the two CD formats was a live version of their previous single, “No Matter What”. Ordinarily, sales of this format would have been removed because said single itself had been their biggest hit to date, spending three weeks at number one and hitting 1m copies sold, and was still charting around the lower end of the top 40 at the time, shifting around 10 – 15k copies a week.
How their label Polydor Records got around this was by reducing the dealer price of “No Matter What” – the price a single was sold to retailers for – below the threshold required for the single to make the chart, in essence still making it available to those who wanted to buy it but keeping it out of the chart to make the path clear for their new single, which came out with all formats intact that November, reaching #2 (much to the disgruntlement of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, but that’s another story you can read about here).
However, no such circumventing went on at Warner Bros Records where Daniel was signed to. On the B-side of the lone CD format of “Free Loop”? Yep, you guessed it: a live version of “Bad Day”. They didn’t even go for what was a common tactic employed even towards the end of the age of the physical single in deleting “Bad Day”, thereby artificially reducing stocks of that single for retailers to order so as to leave uninhibited passage for the new single.
It doesn’t take Poirot to then work out what happened next: “Free Loop” came out, and initially looked to be heading for a top 30 placing midweek, before the Official Charts Company clocked what was happening and promptly yeeted it from the rankings. It mattered not that it was a live version of the song, the rule was the rule. To add insult to injury, had “Free Loop” been chart eligible, “Bad Day” would have still been placed higher in that week’s chart – in fact, it had climbed back up to #16.
A third single, “Lie To Me”, was released the following April 2006, but by then the momentum had passed and the damage had been done, and it missed the top 75 altogether. Daniel Powter’s fate was thus sealed forever more as a one hit wonder, largely by his record label simply failing to do the admin and release scheduling side of their job properly.
True, like with most one hit wonders, perhaps in hindsight the world only really needed one single and album from Daniel, and “Bad Day” has found a solid and respectable audience on streaming and on social media in the two decades since (on Spotify alone it’s been streamed 663m times). But one can’t help but wonder if, had a monumental balls up such as that which “Free Loop” experienced not been made, it might not have made the outcome so predictable.
Don’t forget to follow our Pop Essays playlist on Spotify, which includes this and all the songs we’ve written about. What are your memories of this week’s featured song or artist? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or message us on our Instagram.
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