Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Natural One (1995)
Lou Barlow has had an interesting and fruitful career as an indie rocker with Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh, but if there's a category for Most Unlikely to Have a Top 40 Hit, he would be in it. Not because his songs aren't great and/or catchy, but because the top 40 is usually narrow-minded and not welcoming to folks like ol' Lou. And yet in late 1995, there he was, in the top 40.
At the time, Barlow was in the middle of his hiatus from Dinosaur Jr., having been fired from the group in 1989 (he would reunite with J. Mascis in 2005). He was leading his band Sebadoh and having some indie success with albums like the 1994 release Bakesale. The year before Bakesale came out, Barlow formed the Folk Implosion (the name being a takeoff on the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) with John Davis, who had sent him a tape. The duo released an EP on cassette called Walk Through This World with the Folk Implosion in '93, followed by 1994's Take a Look Inside, which featured 14 songs in 22 minutes.
Barlow had developed a penpal friendship with Harmony Korine, who wrote the script for the movie Kids, and soon Barlow was in charge of putting together the film's soundtrack. He and Davis came up with several new songs, which were augmented by songs by Sebadoh, Daniel Johnston and Slint. "Natural One," despite not actually appearing in the movie itself, was released as a single and it just took off.
The movie was controversial, focusing on a group of street kids and featuring several rape scenes and a character that was HIV positive; it also featured early performances by Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson. But "Natural One" was so goddamn catchy that none of that mattered. Featuring a hypnotic bassline from Barlow and a killer drum part, the song is eminently danceable while also featuring that detached '90s club vibe that was going on. Barlow's vocals are calm and steady, but they convey the mood of the teens in the film (Barlow and Davis wrote the song in the studio while watching scenes from the movie).
"I'm the one, natural one, take it easy/We can take it inside/Where I can love how I like, if I want it/Whatever keeps me high/Yeah, we can take it/Good news on an endless spree/Good because we made it/When mama's not around/There's no telling what we'll do when we're free."
It's a definitely a relatable teen modus operandi, one which Barlow likely remembered from his own youth (he was in his late 20s when he wrote the song).
"I'm the one, natural one, make it easy/We can take it inside/I can have it 'cause I act like I love it/It's a matter of pride/Yeah, we can take it/Good excuse for an endless spree/Good because we made it/If the world is falling down, you may as well crash with me."
"Natural One" came out at the perfect time. It perfectly captured the mood for teens and 20somethings (of which I was one) at the time, not just lyrically but musically. It hit #29 on the Billboard Hot 100, far and away the most successful song commercially that Barlow ever worked on. It also hit #4 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, #20 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and #45 on the U.K. Singles chart.
The video got plenty of play on MTV, so much so that Barlow and Davis received an offer to open for White Zombie in Thailand. Which they refused because they weren't actually a band at that point.
In an interview with Flood magazine, Barlow said the success came as a surprise. "It was a one-off, and we weren't really gonna knuckle down and follow through on this kind of success. I had my band Sebadoh that I was touring with extensively, so I had a distance from it that I could appreciate and say, 'Cool, we have a hit.' I wasn't really expecting a whole lot out of that. I wasn't going to change direction because of it. But it complicated the road forward for a lot of people around me, because a hit's a big deal. The blood's in the water. It got a little dicey after that."
Davis and Barlow ended up forming Deluxx Folk Implosion with Sebadoh drummer Bob Fay and Mark Peretta and played shows in New York and Boston promoting the movie. Folk Implosion released the album Dare to Be Surprised in 1997 and One Part Lullaby in 1999, but they didn't match the heat that "Natural One" had. Davis left the group in 2000 and Barlow recruited two other musicians to record 2003's The New Folk Implosion; the band also appeared in the movie Laurel Canyon that year.
After that, Barlow reunited with both Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr., and the last 20 years have been full of projects from both bands. In 2021, he and Davis started working on new Folk Implosion material, releasing the It Just Goes With EP in 2023. They also released Music for Kids last year, which featured the band's contributions to the Kids soundtrack as well as other songs they wrote at the time. A new Folk Implosion album, Walk Thru Me, is set to come out June 28, followed by a tour. Licensing issues had prevented "Natural One" from appearing on streaming services, but with the Music for Kids releases, it's now available to stream.
The song has appeared in AMC promos and in The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story and the documentary Pepsi, Where's My Jet? A cover by Shearwater also appeared in the great Netflix series Beef.
Almost 30 years on, "Natural One" is now one of those songs that defines the '90s. I fully expect it to be used in movies set in that time period, much like Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" is used in so many '60s montages or the Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)" from the '80s. It's that iconic.
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