On the Enduring Popularity of Hootie and the Blowfish in West Michigan

This morning I was enjoying a mug of Water Street coffee at a quintessentially Kalamazooian breakfast nook. This the kind of place that namedrops a specific grandmother for her sausage-gravy recipe on the menu, and has historic photos of prominent local buildings tacked onto the exposed-brick walls; the kind of place where the employees know nearly everyone who comes in, including myself and my breakfast companion, by name; the kind of place where the mailman strolls in to leave the mail by the register and you hear a disembodied (but sincere) "THANK YOU!" emanate from across the restaurant.

After Manfred Mann's cover of "Blinded by the Light," (which plays, inexplicably, at some point during every single visit to said breakfast establishment) we hear the first jingly chords of Hootie and the Blowfish's "Only Wanna Be With You." There's a palpable buzz in the air and I overhear a waitress singing along; looking across to the opposite row of booths, I see a hippie couple smile, nod, and begin to jam.

Fun fact: Hootie and the Blowfish's 1994 debut Cracked Rear View is currently the 15th best-selling album of all time in the United States. It went platinum a mind-boggling 16 times. So, chalk it up, if you will, to this: that Cracked Rear View was a 90s phenomenon, filled with laid-back, singalong-ready singles designed to not only appeal to the masses but to allow Yuppie white-collar types a chance to fulfill, if only for the 45-minute duration of the album, the hippie fantasies that abounded so readily in the 90s, when late-60s-style counterculture was experiencing a revitalizing gasp of fresh air (thanks, Phish). The 90s Yuppie patted himself on the back for digging such breezy tunes, as it felt for him that this was his way of getting in touch with his Earthy, soulful side, and his way of exorcising the specific brand of mania that only 9-to-5 office rats experience. This phenomenon would later reach new heights with the release of Dave Matthews' Crash.

Somewhere in between the shimmering major-chord progression and one of Ruckers' infamously non-enunciated choruses ("Ah-onleh-wanna-be-wi' YOUUUUU") the waitress returns to take our order: for me, a veggie "Smothered and Covered"-- a delicious dish including a glorious hash of veggies, eggs, and potatoes, and perhaps an allusion to to HATB's compilation of almost the exact same name? Very provocative indeed.

So, not unlike the many, many albums just like it (in terms of popularity), Cracked Rear View-- and its signature singles, still in fairly regular rotation on pop stations today (like my personal favorite, the innocuous "Hold My Hand")-- is just another boom-and-bust pop album that most people don't even know by name, and HATB, as a band, is all but forgotten by music lovers, and music likers, everywhere. Right? Right.

Well, clearly, except for West Michigan.

You may or may not have noticed that an unusual number of people in the greater Kalamazoo-Grand Rapids have an unusual fondness for Hootie and the Blowfish. I have been lucky enough to have lived a couple of places overseas, have done a little bit of traveling, and can be, at times, a known talker-to-strangers. And while the subject of Hootie and the Blowfish doesn't always come up, it is an observable fact that, although a couple of the singles from HATB's debut album are still a part of the mainstream pop canon, most of the 'outside' world has forgotten HATB and, as a result, all but completely forsaken Darius Rucker's solo career. Still, here we are in Kalamazoo, still diggin' HATB and keeping their singles in the rotation just as strongly as any new single. But why?

I've spoken with many people since I first began noticing this trend, and the theories are sundry. First and foremost is the obvious explanation that Michiganders are notoriously unhip: why shouldn't we cling to Hootie's wholesale pop skylarkings? We are a very "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" culture, after all. Isn't it still 1995 in Michigan anyway?

Less snarky explanations also abound among some theorists, and many simply don't even believe that we are the last culture who still thoroughly enjoys Hootie.

Another theory, popular among many studying the Hootie/Kzoo correlation phenomenon is that a female host of the 90s morning show from Kalamazoo's Top 40 Station, WKFR, was rumored to have had a fling of sorts with Darius Rucker himself. Subscribers to this theory maintain that because of her affinity for Rucker, HATB received even more air time in the Kalamazoo area than he did in other parts of the country; in time, it became so ingrained within us that we began to crave Hootie's charming ditties hourly. Supposedly this claim is rooted in truth, but I am yet to discover any indisputable evidence to support this claim.

Whatever the case, this is a phenomenon that, had you not noticed it before, you will probably observe yourself from time to time. Regardless of how crazy I may or may not sound, I still maintain that at any point in time in Kalamazoo, there is at least one public establishment somewhere in the city in which you can hear one of Hootie's blissfully noncontroversial tunes that we Kalamazooians will probably argue shaped the entire 90s pop-music paradigm.