The Alternative Number Ones: Soul Asylum’s “Somebody To Shove”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

In January 1982, the Replacements played at a Minneapolis house party, and the police arrived to bust it up. The Replacements used a live recording of that moment as the intro to their possible U2 diss track "Kids Don't Follow," the opener from their 1982 EP Stink. The Minneapolis cop immortalized on that track almost sounds like a parody of a gumpy Midwestern authority figure -- like the voice that Homer Simpson uses when he's trying to do someone else's voice. When he says that the party is over, you hear scattered boos, a bit of feedback, and one distinctly Jimbo Jones-esque voice bellowing back, "Hey, fuck you, man!" Legend has it that the "fuck you, man" man is Dave Pirner, already on his way to becoming the frontman of Soul Asylum.

It's hard to verify that kind of claim, and the guy who actually recorded that show isn't sure whether it was really Pirner telling the cop to fuck himself. But we'd all prefer to believe that it's really him, right? It's way more fun if it's Dave Pirner than if it's some other random drunk Minneapolis punk kid. And if it is Pirner, then that means he's not just a Replacements fan. It means he's the Replacements fan, the Replacements fan by which all other Replacements fans must be judged. Nothing in Soul Asylum's decades-long discography really disproves that hypothesis.

The Replacements have been in this column a couple of times, but they were famously not a commercially successful entity. Critics loved the Replacements, and they had a cult who would roll around in broken glass for them, but the wider public could not be bothered. The band spent its entire existence in slow-motion self-destruct, and they finally fell apart just before alternative rock became a massive, world-changing force. Paul Westerberg was always bitter that bands like Nirvana found the success that he thought he deserved. That whole idea always seemed profoundly ridiculous to me. The Replacements were gigantic fuckups, and I could never picture a reality in which they actually got their shit together and rocketed to fame. But the existence of Soul Asylum tells me that maybe Westerberg is right. If the Replacements had held on a little longer and caught a couple of breaks, maybe that could've been them.

For the first decade of their existence, Soul Asylum were the little-brother band in the Minneapolis punk scene. When Soul Asylum were stumbling their way into existence, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü, the twin pillars of Twin Cities underground rock, were cranking out one beloved masterpiece after another. Soul Asylum existed forever in the shadow of those two bands, and they could never hope to catch up. Like those two bands, Soul Asylum spent the '80s touring hard and releasing a steady stream of independently released rock albums, many of which were pretty great. Like those two bands, Soul Asylum stayed around long enough to score a major-label deal, which went absolutely nowhere. Those two bands got critical hosannas and permanent best-of list placement, and Soul Asylum didn't. Unlike those two bands, Soul Asylum didn't break up. Instead, they signed to a second major label, and they released Grave Dancers Union, the right album at the right time.

About a decade after that Minneapolis house party, Dave Pirner became a no-shit rock star. He dated a movie star. He hung out with a president. He headlined radio-station festivals in stadiums, and he recorded a great song that became so overplayed that virtually every '90s alt-rock fan got sick of him. "Somebody To Shove" was not that song, but "Somebody To Shove" was the song that kicked off Soul Asylum's ascension into another realm.

When the Minneapolis police busted up that Replacements house show, Dave Pirner was the singer and drummer for a Minneapolis hardcore band called Loud Fast Rules. Great name, right? Loud Fast Rules probably took their moniker from the song that New York punks the Stimulators released in 1980. (Tommy Stinson famously started playing bass in the Replacements when he was 11, and the Cro-Mags' Harley Flanagan was drumming for the Stimulators when he was 11. What the fuck were the rest of us doing when we were 11?) The name Loud Fast Rules probably outlives anything that the band actually did. For years, it served as rock critics' vaguely dismissive shorthand description for any and all hardcore. These days, lots of hardcore isn't fast at all, though it's always loud and it usually rules.

Dave Pirner was not 11 years old when he started Loud Fast Rules. He was a comparatively ancient 17-ish, and he formed Loud Fast Rules with his teenage friends Dan Murphy and Karl Mueller. Eventually, a drummer named Pat Morley joined up, and Pirner kept singing but moved to rhythm guitar. In 1982, Hüsker Dü's label Reflex Records released Barefoot And Pregnant, a compilation that opened with two Loud Fast Rules songs, "Black And Blue" and "Propaganda." They're pretty good! As captured in those songs, Loud Fast Rules are prototypically snotty-sloppy Midwestern hardcore, but there's just a hint of vulnerability in Pirner's voice.

Loud Fast Rules changed their name a couple of times -- first to Proud Crass Fools, and then to Soul Asylum. I think we can all agree that Soul Asylum is the worst of those three names, but it's the one that stuck. Eventually, the band signed to Twin/Tone, the local Minneapolis indie that put out the Replacements' early records, and Hüsker Dü leader Bob Mould produced their 1984 debut album Say What You Will... and their 1986 follow-up Made To Be Broken. (As a solo artist, Bob Mould's highest-charting Modern Rock song is 1989's "See A Little Light," which peaked at #4. It's a 7.) On those early records, you can hear Soul Asylum following a similar path to the Replacements and Hüsker Dü -- moving away from their early punk sound and into a scrappy, ragged, anthemic form of fuzz-rock that occasionally veered into twangy country territory, often as a goof.

I'd never heard the early Soul Asylum records before doing the deep dive while working on this column, but I knew them by reputation. To plenty of people who were all the way up on '80s indie rock, Soul Asylum were the great underrated journeymen of the Minneapolis scene, the guys who couldn't catch a break because they didn't have the gravitas or the explosive creativity of the town's two big bands. Listening now, I can see where that came from. There's a lot of anthemic power in tracks like "Tied To The Tracks" and "Freaks," though there are also plenty of fuck-around moments that aren't as fun to hear as they might've been to make. Soul Asylum had potential, but they also had the bad luck to share a scene with two bands that seemed legendary even in their day.

Soul Asylum released a lot of music -- two albums and a compilation tape in 1986 alone. They toured constantly, first as openers for Hüsker Dü and then as headliners. They didn't sell a ton of records or get enough critical respect to land on Pazz & Jop lists, but they were underground favorites at a time when underground favorites were really underground. At some point, drummer Pat Morley split with the band, and they replaced him with Grant Young, but their lineup remained otherwise intact. In 1988, they followed the Replacements and Hüsker Dü into the major label universe. They spoofed Herb Alpert, their new label boss at A&M, by releasing a 1989 EP called Clam Dip & Other Delights, with Karl Mueller slopped with seafood on the cover.

When Soul Asylum recorded their 1988 major-label debut Hang Time, they had two producers: Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye and Ed Stasium, the guy who probably should've produced the Replacements' Tim. The reviews all talked about how slick Hang Time sounds compared to all of Soul Asylum's previous records, but it doesn't sound that different to me. Maybe you had to be there. Even with the slicker production, Hang Time didn't sell, though the pretty-great single "Sometime To Return" was a college-radio hit.

For 1990's And The Horse They Rode In On, Steve Jordan, the drummer from Keith Richards' X-Pensive Winos, came aboard to produce. By that time, Billboard had its Modern Rock chart up and running, and a couple of that LP's singles charted. ("Spinnin'," the bigger of them, peaked at #14.) That record didn't sell much better than Hang Time, and A&M dropped Soul Asylum. It would've made perfect sense for Soul Asylum to break up right then. By that time, both the Replacements and Hüsker Dü had shattered under similar circumstances, and Dave Pirner was dealing with hearing problems. But Pirner and Dan Murphy played some acoustic shows that got their groove going again, and Soul Asylum landed a new deal at Columbia. Their timing was perfect.

Soul Asylum made their way to Columbia before the post-Nevermind gold rush really got going, but they definitely got a big boost from existing in this new landscape, and you can hear the primordial soup of grunge in their early indie records. When they jumped to Columbia, the band went to work with Michael Beinhorn, a producer who got his start playing keyboard in Bill Laswell's mutant-disco group Material. Beinhorn co-wrote and co-produced Herbie Hancock's 1983 electro hit "Rockit," and he produced a couple of Red Hot Chili Peppers albums and the Violent Femmes' Why Do Birds Sing?. His work will appear in this column again.

The sound on Grave Dancers Union, Soul Asylum's first Columbia album, is way slicker and more radio-ready than what the band did with their A&M albums. Beinhorn surrounded them with session pros like keyboard legend Booker T. Jones, who might not have known much about asylums but who definitely knows how to play soul. Beinhorn didn't think much of Grant Young's drumming, so he brought in session ace Sterling Campbell, formerly of David Bowie's touring band, to play on much of the record. Soon afterward, Soul Asylum kicked Young out, and Campbell became their full-time drummer.

"Somebody To Shove" was not the biggest hit from Grave Dancers Union, but it's the opening track and the first single. That means that the album opens up with one very sick guitar riff. Dan Murphy's pinched, trebly intro riff sounded like metal, and it had me playing air-guitar from the moment I first heard the song. For whatever reason, I've got an extremely tangible memory of messing around with my dad's stereo in the basement, switching from the hard rock station to the alternative one, and hearing that riff right away. As soon as "Somebody To Shove" was over, WHFS played the Butthole Surfers' "Who Was In My Room Last Night?," and I was in little-kid solo-mosh Valhalla. ("Who Was In My Room Last Night?" peaked at #24. The Butthole Surfers will eventually appear in this column.)

Dave Pirner has sole-writer credit on "Somebody To Shove," and the title is an obvious and pretty-dumb play on the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love." It's a song about wanting to be included in something but not knowing how to go out and find that thing yourself; little-kid me could relate. Pirner's narrator is waiting by the phone, waiting for you to call him up and tell him he's not alone, but the phone hasn't rang in so long. He wants somebody to shove him. He could be talking about moshing or S&M or something, but it probably just means that he wants some kind of honest and visceral human contact. It sure doesn't seem like he's getting it.

Dave Pirner loves goofy wordplay, and there's plenty of that in his "Somebody To Shove" lyrics, even beyond that title: "Grandfather watches the grandfather clock," "these hang-ups are getting me down." I don't know why time would fly by like a vulture in the sky; that simile doesn't really track for me. But Pirner sings the song in a ragged and sincere howl; he doesn't do that eyebrow-waggle thing that songwriters sometimes do when they want you to notice how clever their lyrics are. "Somebody To Shove" works in part because he puts so much bite and urgency into his delivery. In a world frozen over with overexposure, he wants to talk it over; he wants to go out and paint the town. He's convinced that all the difference in the world is just a call away; he just doesn't know how to be the one who makes that call. So he keeps waiting, and the waiting, as someone once said, is the hardest part.

In a way, "Somebody To Shove" is the ideal version of what a major-label Replacements record could've been if those guys weren't addicted to shooting themselves in the dick. It's about halfway between the heartland rock of Replacements tourmate Tom Petty and the revved-up roar of Nirvana. The riff ropes in young hard-rock fans like me, but the song switches quickly into urgent, pounding power-pop. The guitars vroom prettily, and Pirner's voice snags on the word "waiting." He doesn't quite crack, but he doesn't sound all that confident, either.

Sonically, "Somebody To Shove" shares a lot with a song like Cracker's "Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)," and I think that says a lot. The immediate beneficiaries of the Nevermind boom weren't all Seattle grunge bands. Plenty of them were underground rock veterans who'd been trying and failing to make it in the business for years and who were rootsier and less metallic than their Seattle peers. Someone should come up with a yacht rock-style retroactive genre name for bands like Soul Asylum, the Gin Blossoms, and the Lemonheads -- the hooky-sloppy alt-rockers who took over the airwaves without achieving canonical status. (Those other bands will all appear in this column.) A lot of that stuff is great! Listening to Grave Dancers Union for the first time in a long while, this thing has held up beautifully. Major-label alt-rockers really had to thread the needle between fired-up intensity and shiny hooks, and Soul Asylum figured out just the right balance.

The video helped, too. For the "Somebody To Shove" clip, Columbia paired Soul Asylum up with young Zack Snyder, the future superhero-movie auteur who'd already directed Morrissey's "Tomorrow" video. Snyder's "Somebody To Shove" clip is pretty incoherent. There's some acupuncture stuff? And a baptism in a river? And Soul Asylum playing for a crowd of moshers, presented in a way that really wants to be "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But the camera absolutely loves Dave Pirner. He's cute and passionate. His hair is always in his face, and sometimes he shakes so hard that it looks like he's convulsing. That's how you make an unlikely heartthrob.

"Somebody To Shove" was just the beginning. Grave Dancers Union was an album full of potential hits, and a bunch of them became actual hits. The band followed "Somebody To Shove" with "Black Gold," an absolutely gorgeous shit-town lament that remains my favorite Soul Asylum song to this day. On "Black Gold," they add in lots of folky-jangly sounds -- I think there's a mandolin in there -- without losing any wounded-romantic fuzz-guitar force. That shit just hits for me. "I don't care about no wheelchair, I got so much left to do with my life" -- that's a line that'll sneak up and knock me sideways every time. Both "Somebody To Shove" and "Black Gold" crossed over to mainstream rock stations, going top-10, and "Black Gold" peaked at #6 on the Modern Rock chart. (It's a 10.)

"Black Gold" and "Somebody To Shove" were big enough that Soul Asylum played MTV's Inaugural Ball for Bill Clinton, but those songs were just table-setting for the real hit. In June 1993, Soul Asylum released the soft, tender ballad "Runaway Train" as a single. They'd never really been a ballads band, but "Runaway Train" changed that. For the video, future American History X director Tony Kaye showed a series of missing kids, urging anyone watching to contact authorities and help those kids find their way home. Later on, a PR campaign claimed that the video had "helped recover 21 missing children." Last year, a really interesting Slate piece dug a little deeper into what happened with those kids. It seems like it's a little more complicated than the PR narrative. Some of those kids had their reasons for running away, and returning home wasn't necessarily going to solve all their problems. But music videos aren't built to convey nuance. The "Runaway Train" video pounded home the idea that lots of people need help, and it resonated.

I'm kind of shocked to discover that "Runaway Train" wasn't a huge hit at alternative radio, at least according to Billboard. That song was everywhere, to the point where I got sick of it pretty quickly, even though it's awfully pretty on its own merits. On the Modern Rock chart, "Runaway Train" only reached #13, which seems impossible. But the song remains Soul Asylum's biggest hit by far. Soul Asylum had never been on the Hot 100 before "Runaway Train," but that song crossed over and went all the way to #5. It also blew up around the world. The "Runaway Train" single went gold, and Grave Dancers Union went double platinum. The album also got enough critical love that it became Soul Asylum's first entry on the Pazz & Jop poll -- coming in at #20, just behind the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy's Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury and just ahead of En Vogue's Funky Divas.

For a few years, Soul Asylum were world-conquerors. Later in 1993, they became the first rock band to play at Bill Clinton's White House; there was an MTV News story about it and everything. Clinton: "You know, they had that wonderful song about runaway children, which had a big impact on young people throughout the country." Organized labor didn't do very well under the Clinton administration; I wonder how the Grave Dancers Union reps felt about NAFTA. Soul Asylum taped an MTV Unplugged special that year, too. Backstage at the taping, Dave Pirner met Winona Ryder, and they were a couple for about three years. Pirner had a cameo in Reality Bites as "guy who just had a one-night stand with Janeane Garofalo" -- nice work if you can get it.

As the Grave Dancers Union album cycle wound down, Soul Asylum remained a presence on alt-rock radio. "Without A Trace," the deep cut that gave the album its title, peaked at #27, but the band's loosies did better. Soul Asylum covered Victoria Williams' "Summer Of Drugs" for the Sweet Relief compilation, and it went to #20. Their really good song "Can't Even Tell" popped up on the Clerks soundtrack in 1994, and it reached #16. Kevin Smith directed that song's video, and it's full of Clerks characters. Lots of big-name directors, it turns out, have made Soul Asylum videos.

Most puzzlingly, Soul Asylum covered Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" for the 1993 benefit compilation No Alternative, and their version made it to #10. I cannot wrap my head around this decision or the fact that it got more alt-rock radio play than "Runaway Train." It seems impossible, but the numbers are there. (Soul Asylum's take on "Sexual Healing" is a probably-too-generous 3. If I have to picture Dave Pirner singing it to Winona Ryder, then you do, too.)

For a little while there, Soul Asylum were stars. It didn't last, but all these years later, the band is still around. And anyway, their run on top lasted long enough that we'll eventually see them in this column again.

GRADE: 8/10

BONUS BEATS: Here's the languid, stretched-out six-minute "Somebody To Shove" cover that Drivin' N' Cryin' frontman Kevn Kinney -- it's not a typo, he really spells his name like that -- released in 2022:

(The only Modern Rock chart hit for Drivin' N' Cryin' is 1991's "Fly Me Courageous," which peaked at #15. Good song!)