How About That Thing?

Ah, the spring of 2004. I remember it fondly. I had a girlfriend for the first time ever, I was on the verge of graduating high school, Family Guy was a long ways away from becoming the tediously unwatchable shambling corpse it is now… And my latest obsession had come in the form of a band by the name of Crossfade.

Now I ca1n’t speak for the rest of the world, but in Kansas City, Crossfade was definitely a prime example of a one-hit wonder. Although determining which of the three singles from that album was the hit is something I haven’t figured out quite yet. All I know for certain was that they hit the airwaves in 2004, received some considerable airplay for the next year or two… Then 2006 happened, and suddenly, nobody wanted anything to do with them. And upon retrospect, I wonder why?

Of course, the journey begins with their self-titled debut.

There were three singles off of this album:

• COLD. The first single, and probably the most well known. It’s quite literally an apology set to song, but damn that chorus! To this very day, it can still occasionally find its way into my head, and refuse to pay rent.
• So Far Away. Honestly, of the three singles, it’s the best. It’s heavy, the chorus is catchy, the lyrics make sense… All and all, I’m surprised this one got dropped as quickly as it did.
• Colors. Frankly, out of the three singles, this one was the worst. “Of all the colors you’ve shined, this is surely not your best.” That has got to be the clunkiest sentence to ever come out of the 2000s. And you should’ve seen what memes looked like in the 2000s. I know what they were trying to go for, but that sentence just kills any momentum, and any possibility of me taking this song seriously dead.

So, two out of three. Not terrible. But then, I listened to the rest of the album. And… Honestly, it’s hard to put my finger on, upon retrospect. It’s too unique to be bad, but too bland to be good.

One thing I noticed right off the bat is that the album is editted. Every instance of an F-bomb, or an S-bomb has been cut out of the lyrics. This would be expected if I’d bought this at Walmart, but I remember buying this at a local record store (back when those existed) where everything was uneditted, and the cashiers were regularly blasting Meshuggah behind the counter. Not to mention I listened to it on Tidal recently, and encountered the same level of censoreship. I never found an answer for why this was, but I guess the censored version of this album is the only one that’s available.

That’d be a lot more annoying if censor-worthy profanity existed on more than two songs, and both instances were real brief. It wasn’t like they were swearing every other word like a lot of their contemporaries. Still, though, what an odd choice.

And as for the music… Like I said, it’s pretty middle of the road. The instrumental is fine, though maybe don’t expect any high speed guitar solos or anything. The REAL weakness in a lot of the music comes from the lyrics. More than anything, just the wording in some of these songs is just… Off. I once again refer you to “Of all the colors that you’ve shined, this is surely not your best.”

But upon relistening to this album twenty years later, I could MAYBE see why I liked these guys at first. They definitely had some kinks to work out, but in terms of debut albums, you could’ve done worse.

Then their second album came out.

Once I was done listening to the first album, I moved on to “Falling Away”: their sophomore album. From the way I remember things, this was apparently the album that killed their platinum-winning ways dead. And after listening to a generous chunk of it… Yeah, I think I’m starting to see why.

Wikipedia insists there were three singles from this one, but I only ever remember one: “Invincible”. And whew boy, you want to talk about corny as hell.

Like I said, their first album didn’t have EVERYTHING right, but this second album was somehow worse. It was so bad, I couldn’t even make it all the way through!

The opening track, “Washing the World Away”, sounds more like something Chevelle would write, instrumentally speaking. Granted, I also liked Chevelle at the time, and I kind of still do from time to time. However, when I bought a CROSSFADE album, Chevelle was the last thing I wanted to hear.

And then, there’s “Invincible”. Boy oh boy, what a cornball track this turned out to be! This has got to be the hokiest thing I’d ever heard at the time, and I’m pretty sure 2006 was also the year that gave us the embarrassment that was “Alcohaulin’ Ass”. But I digress.

Honestly, I think the only halfway listenable track on this entire album is “Already Gone”. And trust me, that’s not saying much.

So yeah, I think I can see why these guys disappeared into obscurity after all. That sophomore album is the kind of thing that kills careers like that.

Hell, there’s a third album they apparently put out in 2011, but I can never seem to work up the courage to look into it. Not to mention it came out FIVE YEARS LATER. I guess they were hoping the stink of “Falling Away” would’ve dissipated by then? I don’t know, and I’m not invested enough to care.

But that first album is something special. For all its faults, it was part of a by-gone era. An era where life was starting to look up, the possibilities seemed endless, and the future seemed bright. Then I found out I’d be repeating twelfth grade, my girlfriend broke up with me, and John Kerry lost the 2004 election. Note: George W. Bush didn’t WIN the election, John Kerry LOST the election. The same way Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election. You literally had a gibbering idiot running against you, and the election was pretty much a slam dunk from the word go, and you STILL managed to shoot yourself in the butt! But I digress.

While 2004 eventually degenerated into shit, that first half was a thing of beauty. and for me, Crossfade’s self-titled album, for better and for worse, was a generous part of the soundtrack to that era of my life.