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Lead singer Brendad Brown formed Wheatus in 1995 when he began writing songs in New York City, U.S., and recruited his brother Peter Brown on drums, Rich Liegey on bass and Philip A. Jimenez as multi-instrumentalist, inlcuding percussion, keyboard and the harmonica. The name Wheatus is a play on the word “Wedus” which is what the Brown brothers’ father used to affectionally call them as children.
In 1999 the band hired the attorney Ray Maiello, who helped the band get signed with Kevin Patrick at Columbia Records and was subsequently hired as manager. Wheatus’ self-titled debut album was released on August 15, 2000 and proved to be the band’s commercially successful album, featuring the unforgettable “Teenage Dirtbag” The single reached No. 2 in the UK’s Singles Chart and has since been the soundtrack in the movie “Loser” and the TV series “Generation Kill”. The single’s follow-up, a cover of Erasure’s “A Little Respect”, also performed well in the charts, peaking at No. 3 in the UK’s Singles chart.
Shortly after, lead singer Brown refused to lip-sync on the UK show Top of the Pops and in response Columbia Records, under the ownership of Song Music Entertainment refused to release the band’s sophomore album. The refusal led to a change in album titled from “Hand Over Your Loved Ones” to the rather aptly named “Suck Fony”, the album was eventually released on their own label Montauk Mantis in February 2005.
A consistent series of personnel changes left Brendad Brown as the only remaining member of the original line-up. Wheatus has since released three albums 2005’s “TooSoonMonsoon”, 2009’s “Pop, Songs & Death” and 2013’s “The Valentine”, the latter of which concerned issues regarding LGBT individuals in school and sexual equality. In 2013 the boyband One Direction started covering Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag”, introducing the band to a newer audience.
There’s no real doubting ‘Teenage Dirtbag’s status as one of the biggest hits of the noughties; the flipside of that success, for Wheatus, is that it’s pretty firmly secured them one-hit wonder status. Everybody knows that song, but plenty of people couldn’t even name the band behind it, much less tell you what they got up to next; those with sharper memories might recall that their next single, a cover of Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’, was a reasonable chart success, too, but after that, they pretty much fell of the radar, following a label dispute over their poorly-promoted second album that would eventually lead to them reissuing it under the name ‘Suck Fony’. In fact, though, Wheatus are still going strong today, and their relative anonymity these days has at least afforded them the possibility of experimentation, recording their last album, The Valentine LP, in the super high-fidelity DSD format. They continue to tour the UK, too, on an annual basis, with their latest run of dates set for October; if you’re after a quick shot of nostalgia, you could do far worse than check them out - and, just in case you were wondering, no, they haven’t done a Radiohead: ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ remains very much pride of place in the setlists.
Joeg_67
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