Day After Day #52: Hate to Say I Told You So

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

Hate to Say I Told You So (2000)

There have been many cases over the years where a band releases a killer song and nothing happens. Radio doesn't play it, people don't hear it and those that do hear it don't react to it. 

This happened to the Swedish band the Hives when they released their second album Veni Vidi Vicious on Burning Heart and Epitaph in April 2000. There wasn't much of a reaction to it until Alan McGee, a music executive and founder of Creation Records, saw the video for "Hate to Say I Told You So" on German TV and signed the band to his Poptones label, which released a compilation of the band's first two albums. The album went to #7 on the UK album chart and led to Veni Vidi Vicious being re-released in the U.S. in April 2002.

This time around, people listened. "Hate to Say I Told You So" was suddenly getting played on rock radio (this was back when there were still stations playing new songs) and MTV started playing the video. The timing was better for the song to hit in early '02: it got lumped into the whole garage rock revival that was happening with the Strokes, the White Stripes, the Vines, etc.

On top of all that, the song just kicks all of the requisite ass. The Hives know how to deliver the goods, playing propulsive garage punk with a sense of humor. They wear matching suits, they've got goofy stage names like frontman Howlin' Pelle Almqvist and they've got boundless energy. On "Hate to Say I Told You So," the Hives ride a catchy riff and just pummel the listener into submission with awesomeness, slow the din down to a lone bass line and then rev it up again. This is one of those songs that will get you ready to run through a wall.

"Do what I please, gonna spread the disease/Because I wanna/Gonna call all the shots for the no's and the nots/Because I wanna/Yeahhhhhhhh."

In the U.S., the re-released song went to #6 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart, #35 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #86 on the Hot 100 chart. The album went to #63 on the Billboard 200, but more importantly, it allowed the Hives to establish themselves as a premier live band. I saw them in the summer of '02 at the Roxy (now the Royale) and they blew the roof off the place. Almqvist is a master performer and loves to work the crowd with stage banter and the band is constantly in motion. 

Over the 20+ years since, the Hives have released four more albums, although there was an 11-year gap between Lex Hives and last year's The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, which was an excellent return to form. They still do what they do best: rock the hell out and have a ton of fun doing it (see their performance last year on the Howard Stern Show below).