The Ashcan

Albums I Unfortunately Own: Zuckerbaby – Zuckerbaby

Posted on 08. Jul, 2010 by Simon in Music

Have you ever looked through your cd collection? Naturally, the fact that they are cd’s mean that they represent a somewhat dated period in your musical tastes. For me, most of my cd’s are from the latter half of high school and the first few years of university.

As such, I have more than a few albums that, in hindsight, I am perplexed I own and although I can recall my state of being when I bought them, I am somewhat embarrassed by how irrelevant they have become.

Today, our way back playback is an Albertan pop-rock band called Zuckerbaby, who are the definition of a one hit wonder. Keep reading if you want to dust off your memories and take a stroll down memory lane.

Back in, oh, I want to say grade 10, I used to actually watch Much Music for their videos. In fact, I would actually spend entire afternoons watching MM, and my musical tastes were actually somewhat influenced by the weekly countdown. Keep in mind, this was before the internet was ubiquitous, back when logging online meant dialling up with a modem and hogging your house’s only phone line only to be booted off from whatever you were doing the second your parents got a phone call.

During those early days, Zuckerbaby had a single called “Andromeda”. It was catchy, played on heavy rotation on the MM countdown, was Canadian and had an Asian dude in the band.

I was sold.

I went to Music World (remember them?) and bought Zuckerbaby’s self-titled album. I realized after listening to the cd that, unfortunately, “Andromeda” was the only good song on the album. Follow up single “Heavy” was somewhat catchy as well, but failed to take off the same way the band’s first single did. Really Zuckerbaby was the bane of a cd buyers existence — an album with only one good song on it.

These were the perils of buying an album back in the day. Before the internet allowed you to download albums or play samples to get an idea of what the other songs were like. You took the risk when plopping down $15 that your purchase might be utter shit.

I have more than a few of these unfortunate one-hit albums.

Still though, “Andromeda” even now has some worthwhile moments. Although the lyrics are far from intelligent (there’s a girl, named Andromeda) it remains a somewhat catchy song that encapsulated the three piece rock band pop zeitgeist — bands like Third Eye Blind, Limblifter and Better Than Ezra. The chorus is sing-along and there is a more than passable crescendo towards the end.

The song is a mid-nineties cliche, but it’s one of the better examples of Can-con pop from the period.

After “Andromeda”, Zuckerbaby basically disappeared from existence. Apparently they put out a sophomore album in 2000 titled Platinum Again. I can barely find any information on it online.

Still. We’ll always have “Andromeda”, which to this day reminds me of skipping French class.

Pour one out, Calgary music scene.

Tags: Andromeda, Better Than Ezra, Heavy, Limblifter, Much Music, Third Eye Blind, Zuckerbaby