Day After Day #42: Fade Into You

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Fade Into You (1993) 

Oh hey, it's Valentine's Day. Happy candy hearts to all that celebrate. Nearly six weeks into this endeavor, I'm not going sappy with it. I was trying to think of a good love song to write about and kept coming up with things that were more anti-love or at least anti-Valentine's Day. 

But then I remembered "Fade Into You," a dream-pop classic from the early '90s by Mazzy Star. It's about as chill as chill gets, with David Roback's drifting slide guitar and singer Hope Sandoval singing softly about an unrequited love that she longs for endlessly. It's only 4+ minutes but it feels like it should go on for another hour, just carrying you on a wave of melancholy.

"I want to hold the hand inside you/I want to take a breath that's true/I look to you and I see nothing/I look to you to see the truth."

The song hit #3 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1994 and was the band's only song to crack the Billboard Hot 100, getting up to #44. The song got plenty of play on radio, from alternative to adult alternative (those stations you'd hear at the gym or the bank that wouldn't offend your parents), and on MTV, where the video featured iconic images of Sandoval singing and the band playing in the Mojave Desert. 

The band has kept fairly mum about the song over the years. Sandoval, who wrote the lyrics, has only said, "I think it's a good song" about it, while Roback (who composed the music) only said that the band wasn't trying to write a hit and didn't delve into its meaning.

"Fade into you/Strange you never knew/Fade into you/I think it's strange you never knew."

The song was on 1993's So Tonight That I Might See, which follows a similarly hypnotic path, although Roback stretches out on guitar on songs like "Wasted" and "She's My Baby." Back in my single days, I used to listen to music as I went to sleep and this was one of the albums I would often put on. You could just float away listening to Sandoval's voice and the dark, psychedelic dream of the music. I was usually out by the third or fourth song. Don't get me wrong, though: I listened to it plenty during daylight hours as well. It was sort of the antidote to blasting Rollins Band or Nirvana; you can't listen to the hard-charging stuff 24/7.

The band only released one more album in the '90s, 1996's Among My Swan, which was less successful. While working on another album, Sandoval asked out of her contract and the band went on hiatus. Eventually she formed a solo project, Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, and released a few albums. She reunited with Roback to release another Mazzy Star album, Seasons of Your Day, in 2013 and later an EP, Still, in 2018. Roback died in 2020 of cancer.

"Fade Into You" is one of those songs that immediately makes you think of that era. It's become as much of an iconic identifier of the early '90s as Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" is for the '60s in movie montages. Countless films and TV shows have used it to soundtrack scenes, often romantic ones. It still holds up and it still carries you away.