“Shoebox” by Barenaked Ladies – Song of the Week February 22, 2012 at 9:37 am
This week’s song is one of the lesser known hits from a very well known band. That band being Barenaked Ladies which have sold over 5 million records in the US and have charted a number one hit in 1998 with “One Week.” “Shoebox,” released in 1995, is the first single off of their third studio album, Born on a Pirate Ship, which also features one of their most popular hits, “Old Apartment.”
The single was also featured on the Friends Original TV Soundtrack, a album which of course features the famous theme song for the show, “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts, but also such classics as “It’s a Free World, Baby” by R.E.M and “I Go Blind” by Hootie and The Blowfish.
Barenaked Ladies is one of my favorite bands from the ’90s so this song is just one of many that I thoroughly enjoy but this one tends to be toward the top of the list, mainly due to this line in the song, “Your so nineteen ninety / And It’s nineteen ninety four.” There is something about using a year as a term to describe someone that makes me laugh every time, especially when that year happens to be almost twenty years ago. It’s a song that a lot of people can relate to as I am sure most people had a shoebox full of memories under thier bed when they were a kid and a song that is thoroughly fun to dance and sing along to as shown by the music video below.
The music video is better than the average music video, I have to admit, but it is pretty over the top. It features the band playing in the shoebox referenced in the song and tells the story of the teenage girl sneaking out of her parents house to go see a Barenaked Ladies concert with what appears to be the man of her dreams and the subsequent “fooling around” that ensues back at his apartment. This, of course, all turns out to be a dream at the end of the video. Classic.
According to the Wikipedia article on the song, the video was supposed to feature Lisa Kudrow and Matt Lablanc from Friends but “each pulled out nearly last minute, and had to be replaced with unknown actors.” I’m not sure if those two actors would have made the video any better but it certainly would have made the video more popular. Anyway, they did a good job with the music video and at least look like they had a great time making it (see: Tyler Stewart tackling giant lipstick around the 1:30 mark).
Enjoy.
