Lifehouse

The most successful song in the United States across the whole of 2001 was "Hanging by a Moment", by Lifehouse. That is not a figure of speech: it is the number one on the year-end Hot 100 that Billboard publishes, the count that adds up the airplay and the sales of all fifty-two weeks and settles which was the song of the year. And that song never reached number one on the weekly chart. Its ceiling was number 2, a single step it could not climb, while above it other titles took turns, lasting two or three weeks and then disappearing. Lifehouse won the year by losing every week. They were a melodic rock band with no great pretensions, the kind that shared the radio with Nickelback and Counting Crows, and they ended up inside a statistic almost nobody has managed.

From Blyss to a contract, with a childhood in transit

Jason Wade was born on 5 July 1980 in Camarillo, California, into a family of missionaries. He spent a good part of his childhood outside the country: Japan, Thailand, Singapore and then Hong Kong, moving every few years and starting again at every stop. When he was twelve his parents divorced and he went to live with his mother in Washington. That is where he started writing poems, to put it in his own words: to get out what he did not know how to say any other way.

His mother decided the town was too small for what her son wanted to do and in 1995 she moved them to Los Angeles. The bass player Sergio Andrade lived next door. The following year, Wade, Andrade and Jon Palmer formed Blyss and started playing schools and universities, to an audience drawn mainly from churches.

Blyss lasted until 2000. The change of name to Lifehouse came with the DreamWorks contract and with the first album. Wade explained the choice without any solemnity: it had to do with what they did as a band and with what he was looking for personally.

The number one of the year without a week at the summit

No Name Face was released on 31 October 2000. "Hanging by a Moment" was written by Wade, by his own account, in about five minutes and without thinking about what might happen to it afterwards; he has also said he accepts both readings people give it, the love song and the spiritual song. Ron Aniello produced it and Brendan O'Brien mixed it.

The single entered the Hot 100 at number 76 in February 2001 and climbed unhurriedly, week after week, until it touched number 2 on 16 June 2001. It got no further. What it did instead was stay: fifty-four consecutive weeks on the chart, more than a whole year on the air. That is exactly the kind of run the year-end count rewards and the weekly one does not see, because the year-end adds up everything accumulated and the weekly only looks at the peak.

So, as 2001 closed, "Hanging by a Moment" came out as the number one on the year-end Hot 100. It was the third song in the chart's history to head a year-end count without having been number one for a single week: before it, "Wooly Bully", by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, had done so in 1965, and "Breathe", by Faith Hill, in 2000. In Australia it did reach number one, spent twenty-four weeks on the chart and went double platinum that same year.

"You and Me" and sixty-two weeks

The second act was slower and, in a very concrete sense, more stubborn. In 2005 they released a self-titled album with "You and Me", a ballad that reached number 5 on the Hot 100 and stayed sixty-two weeks on the chart: the fifth longest run in the history of the Hot 100. The same pattern again, that of a song that never wins and never leaves.

Smoke and Mirrors, from 2010, debuted at number 6 on the Billboard 200 and is their highest entry on that chart. In between they went on releasing albums without great jolts, faithful to the same formula of a big chorus and an introspective lyric, with an audience that did not grow much but did not leave either.

The silence since 2021

The band has been on hiatus since 2021. Their last release was the EP Goodbye Kanan, from November of that year, which gathered five singles recorded during 2021 plus one new track. The last active line-up was Wade on vocals, guitar and piano, Rick Woolstenhulme Jr. on drums, Bryce Soderberg on bass and Steve Stout on lead guitar.

Wade has not stopped working: he has a solo career, he plays the Lifehouse repertoire in acoustic format and he is part of the group ØZWALD alongside Stout. The hiatus has never been presented as a break-up, and nobody in the band has spoken of an ending.

What to remember

Lifehouse invented nothing and did not claim to. What they have is a statistical anomaly that describes them better than any praise: the most successful song in the United States in 2001 was theirs and it was never number one. "Hanging by a Moment" won not by bursting through but by staying, climbing slowly and coming down even more slowly, and "You and Me" repeated the move four years later with sixty-two weeks on the chart.

There are two ways to win on the radio. One is the explosion, which occupies the summit for three weeks and burns out. The other is to last. Lifehouse won a whole year with the second, and that is why the song keeps turning up in places where nobody put it on purpose: a shop, somebody else's car, a party from twenty-five years ago. Done without a single weekly number one.

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Sources

Lifehouse are an American band of alternative rock and melodic post-grunge formed in Los Angeles. Their singer, guitarist and main songwriter is Jason Wade, born on 5 July 1980 in Camarillo, California, the son of missionary parents; he spent part of his childhood in Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong, and his parents divorced when he was twelve. After moving to Los Angeles in 1995, Wade met the bass player Sergio Andrade, his neighbour; in 1996 they formed the group Blyss with Jon Palmer, the forerunner of Lifehouse, active under that name until 2000. The debut album "No Name Face" was released on 31 October 2000 by DreamWorks Records. The single "Hanging by a Moment", written by Wade, produced by Ron Aniello and mixed by Brendan O'Brien, debuted at number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 2001 and peaked at number 2 on 16 June 2001, remaining fifty-four consecutive weeks on the chart. It was the number one on Billboard's year-end Hot 100 for 2001, that is, the most successful song in the United States that year, without ever having headed the weekly chart: it was the third song in history to achieve this, after "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs in 1965 and "Breathe" by Faith Hill in 2000. In Australia it reached number one, spent twenty-four weeks on the chart and was certified double platinum in 2001. The self-titled album of 2005 included "You and Me", which reached number 5 on the Hot 100 and remained sixty-two weeks on the chart, the fifth longest run in the history of that count. "Smoke and Mirrors" (2010) debuted at number 6 on the Billboard 200, their highest position. The band has been on hiatus since 2021; their last release was the EP "Goodbye Kanan", from November 2021, and their last active line-up was Jason Wade (vocals, guitar and piano), Rick Woolstenhulme Jr. (drums), Bryce Soderberg (bass) and Steve Stout (guitar). Wade maintains a solo career and takes part in the group ØZWALD with Stout. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Wikipedia and other coverage.