Song Beneath the Song: “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms

 

NEW MISERABLE EXPERIENCE, the first full-length LP by the Gin Blossoms—and, of greater relevance to the band’s tragic history, its major-label debut—was released in August of 1992, when I was in college. At the time, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were all the rage, twin exemplars of a “Seattle Sound” that also included Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, and Temple of the Dog. Seattle was, and is, known for its gray skies, and I’d argue that this meteorological bleakness contributed in some way to the dark clouds hovering over “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Jeremy” and “Black Hole Sun.” Grunge, it seems, was nourished by rain.

Unlike many of the big alt-rock acts of the day, the Gin Blossoms were not from the Pacific Northwest but Tempe, Arizona—a dry land of sometimes oppressive sunshine and heat. This sunniness is evident in their music. At the time, I mistook it for lack of substance, a dishonesty even. Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder were real, man, they were sharing their pain, their worlds turned to black, hello hello hello how low. The Gin Blossoms, by contrast, were Grunge Lite, a watered-down version of the Seattle sound that was obviously manufactured for radio—what Foo Fighters would one day become. They were sell-outs—liked, certainly, but not beloved in the way Nirvana and Pearl Jam were. That, at least, was my impression of them in 1992.

The band’s moment in the sun would be short-lived. In December of 1993, I heard—in that vague, word-of-mouth way that casual listeners like me then acquired our musical knowledge—that “the guy from the Gin Blossoms who wrote all their songs just killed himself.” (Five months later, Cobain would follow suit.) At the time, I assumed that the suicide was the lead singer, but it was not Robin Wilson but the guitarist, Doug Hopkins, who took his own life. I also assumed that the Blossoms were done; a band without its hook-happy songwriter is basically a cover band. They did stick around for awhile, and indeed still play music, but they never again achieved that level of success.

Painted with broad strokes, the Gin Blossoms’ tale of woe echoes that of Joy Division, whose lead singer, the inimitable Ian Curtis, famously hung himself in his kitchen the day before the band was to leave for its first American tour—allegorically, Moses dying a few steps from the Promised Land. But Curtis was not kicked out of Joy Division, far from, and the remaining members went on to form the not-commercially-or-musically-insignificant New Order. No, the story of the Gin Blossoms is more layered, more nuanced. It reads like something from Euripides. Doug Hopkins is one of rock music’s great tragic figures, made more tragic by the fact that most people have never heard of him. I did not know his name until I started researching this piece.

This is what went down: During the recording of New Miserable Experience, Hopkins—the band’s co-founder, guitarist, and chief songwriter, as well as an alcoholic who struggled with depression—was reportedly drinking so heavily that he could not play. (He denied this, but his brother suggested that it was true[1. Thanks be to the good people at Lost Horizons, the Doug Hopkins tribute site, for archiving these articles]). As sessions for the album wound down, and a tour was planned, the band was given a choice: fire Hopkins, or lose their major-label record contract—and their one shot at making it big. They chose the former, and dispatched Laura Liewan, their friend and former manager who herself had been fired by the band, to give him the bad news.

Jettisoned from the Blossoms—and forced, for financial reasons, to sell low on his publishing rights—Hopkins could only watch a few months later as a song he wrote was released as the album’s first single, and went gold. “When it comes on the radio, I turn it off, because I don’t really want to hear that,” he told an interviewer in October of 1992. “It’s my song but I don’t enjoy it. I can’t listen to it because it just pisses me off.” Hopkins spent the next year writing what he called “Wilson-Phillips-type songs” for a corporate publishing concern, and he formed another band—starting from scratch at age 31—while his former bandmates were playing the song he wrote on Letterman. By the end of 1993, he couldn’t handle it any more. Clinical depression plus circumstantial depression is a toxic combination. Despite the efforts of his family and friends, Hopkins attempted suicide. When it didn’t take, he bought a gun and tried again, this time successfully. He died on December 5, 1993—20 years ago this week. He would not know that another song he wrote from the album, “Found Out About You,” would soar to number one on the Billboard “Modern Rock Tracks” list.

This is not to suggest that the other band members made the wrong choice, or that if they had stood behind him things would have turned out different; Hopkins reportedly attempted suicide nine times previously, and critical and commercial success did nothing to convince his fellow depressive rocker, Kurt Cobain, to stick around. Furthermore, they had their own careers to think about; whatever happened in the studio, Hopkins was clearly in no shape to join them for the tour. The surviving band members, according to no less an authority than People magazine, “struggle[d] with feelings of grief and guilt.” It’s hard not to feel bad for these guys:

“Without Doug and his songwriting, we never could have signed a record deal,” says [Robin] Wilson, who, along with the other band members, kicked Hopkins out of the group in April 1992 when his alcoholism made it impossible for him to record or tour. “Even Doug admitted we couldn’t have succeeded with him in the band.” Then Wilson adds, after a pensive pause, “He also felt we had betrayed him.”

Although there are clips of him in the videos, there is no mention of Hopkins on the “about” page of the Gin Blossoms’s official website. But should there be? He’s been dead for 20 years, two decades in which the band has been more or less active. And yet he haunts the group. As the Arizona Republic put it in an article about his suicide, “the band’s success is built on Hopkins’ songs.”

This story is a tragedy precisely because it sucks all around.

The song that was the first single from New Miserable Experience, the song Hopkins turned off when it came on the radio, the song that earned him a gold record that he destroyed in a fit of rage, the song for which the Gin Blossoms are best known, the song that peaked at #4 on the Billboard chart 20 years ago this summer, is called—and Oedipus himself would choke on the irony—“Hey Jealousy.”

When I first heard this song, in my college days, I more or less ignored it. I was more interested in Nirvana, a band I rarely play now. It was only years later that I actually listened to “Hey Jealousy”, and began to appreciate its subtle genius. Kurt Cobain made no attempt to conceal his general contempt. The scream-singing, the defiant posturing, the taunting rendition of “Get Together” at the beginning of “Territorial Pissing,” the cheerleaders of apathy in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video—Cobain was like the proverbial cornered rat, gnashing his teeth, wounded, sure, but with plenty of fight left in him. This very much reflected the spirit of Generation X in the early 90s. But it hasn’t aged well, at least in my mind. That moment of generational fuck-you passed. Great as they are, Nevermind and In Utero are time capsules now. Once the first baby was outfitted with the first Nirvana onesie, the spell was broken.

What I mistook for slick packaging, the sunniness of the Gin Blossom’s sound, was really something else: a brilliant disguise. Hopkins was working with a different, and a more timeless, kind of irony. The Arizona Republic described it well: his songs “set dark lyrics about drinking and other obsessions to a sprightly beat.” Where Cobain channeled the angst of a generation, Hopkins communicated his own, smaller but no less miserable, form of pain, and it resonates just as powerfully today as it did 20 years ago. Behind the bright, jangly guitars is a musical cry for help, made more profound by an exquisitely plangent vocal performance by Robin Wilson. I mean, listen to him! He sounds so fucking sad. And make no mistake, “Hey Jealousy” is a sad, sad song.

The lyrics are essentially a monologue: a desperate man, drunk (“I’m in no shape for driving”), with nowhere else to turn, shows up at his ex-girlfriend’s house and begs her to let him stay the night. It is not an appeal for sex; he just wants to sleep it off on her couch. The alcohol has burned off the pride that might prevent him from making the same appeal sober: in vino veritas. He acknowledges that the forces that drove them apart—infidelity of some kind, suspected or actual—were his fault. He promises a better tomorrow: he will stay sober (the original line was “you can trust me not to drink”; it was later changed to the nonsensical “think”) and remain faithful (his admission of having “blown the whole thing years ago” combined with his promise “not to sleep around” suggests that he doesn’t have a strong track record on this point)—and the fact that he’s bombed while saying this underscores how impossible a pledge it is.

There is a touch of Springsteen here (a songwriter Hopkins considered an influence): although we desperately want Mary to get in the car, and Rosalita to come out tonight, we somehow know that both will close the door and remain home instead. But The Boss at least promises an escape from Losertown, NJ, a pretty little bar in California down San Diego way. All this guy has to offer is a cruise around Tempe while being chased by the police—not exactly the stuff of happily-ever-after fantasy. Even if this woman, disturbed late at night by her sloppy ex-boyfriend, allows him to sleep on her sofa—and I don’t think she does, although I want her to—all tomorrow will bring is more misery. The best line in the song is the chorus: “The past is gone but something might be found to take its place.” He wants that “something” to be love, connection, intimacy, forgiveness, happiness, hope, but more likely it’s a hangover, or worse.

Even though he wrote the song before his removal from the band, it’s hard not to read “Hey Jealousy” in that context: as Hopkins appealing for reinstatement. This layer of meaning, a foreshadowing, contributes to the tragedy of his story, and his song’s.

Hopkins, in undated photo.

About Greg Olear

Greg Olear (@gregolear) is a founding editor of The Weeklings and the author of the novels Totally Killer and Fathermucker, an L.A. Times bestseller.
This entry was posted in Song Beneath the Song and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

46 Responses to Song Beneath the Song: “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms

  1. Gloria says:

    Well, hell. That’s depressing.

    I think about this, though – how the music sets the tone for a song, not the lyrics. I think that’s why I love singers like Richard Cheese, who is brilliant at reshaping songs musically, while leaving the lyrics perfectly in tact.

    Interesting expose. Thanks, Greg!

  2. Patrick says:

    Spot on, Greg.

  3. J.M. Blaine says:

    Good night, Greg this is awesome!
    Where have you been hiding this stuff? I want to see
    all of it you have. A whole book of it even.

    Love this song. Always did.
    There’s so much stuff from the 90s
    that seems lost.

    • The Editors says:

      Thanks, my friend. I love doing these, because they’re always about songs I really like, rather than ones I’m making fun of. I could keep doing them forever. And probably will…

  4. Jennifer says:

    I knew Doug before he was in the Gin Blossoms. He would play at backyard parties with bands like the Psalms and the Moral Majority. Most of my other friends were more hard core punk back then. I think he was always sensitive to the idea that his songs were considered to have a “lack of substance, a dishonesty even”. Good job on this article. I pray Phoenix will shake this funk. There are many great artists here.

  5. FrancoEX says:

    Well, for what it’s worth, Doug Hopkins was born in Seattle.

  6. Pingback: Song Beneath the Songs: “Hey Jealousy” by The Gin Blossoms — The Good Men Project

  7. Greg B says:

    This is an excellent piece, helped me rediscover a song from past and see it in whole different, albeit tragic, light.
    Awesome job Greg.

  8. Doug S says:

    Tonight I will have a few drinks and Lost Horizons on infinite repeat like I do every December 5th.

    “Drink enough of anything to make this world look new again.” – Brilliant.

    And maybe my favorite lyrics of all time:

    “She had nothing left to say so she said she loved me
    I stood there grateful for the lie…”

    Thanks Doug, you wrote the words I never could.

  9. Julie says:

    May it also be noted that by the time the Gin Blossoms had their first non-Doug hit – (two albums laterish – my timeline might be off) – it was co-written by Marshall Crenshaw. The Gin Blossoms killed the golden goose. For the past 15 years or so they’ve been playing street fairs, zoo’s and 90’s nostalgia nights at casino’s and suburban bars across America. Exactly what this band deserves. Catch them this summer at a “Taste of Naperville, IL” with the Spin Doctors and The Jayhawks, maybe Soul Asylum.

    • The Editors says:

      Julie: in a word, ouch.

      But you speak to the point, which is that it’s all a tragedy.

      Thanks for sharing and reading!

      –Greg

  10. Kevin says:

    The Hopkins tragedy is obvious by I must give props to Robin Wilson & Jesse Valenzuela for making the tough decision they made in 1992 and trudging ahead ultimately leaving us with a fantastic and impactful body of work. Besides the obvious New Miserable Experience hits the highly underrated “Congratulations I’m Sorry” record in 1996 stands on it’s own with several rarely heard contagiously melodic tracks including Perfectly Still and Competition Smile.

    Until I Hear it From You is in a class of it’s own…… forgive me in advance for comparing it to Brian Wilson’s epic “God Only Knows.”

    • nigel hogarth says:

      OOoh not sure about the Brian Wilson connection….Two great songs but the Pet Sounds song is one of hope and homage to God….

  11. Anna H says:

    ‘Although there are clips of him in the videos, there is no mention of Hopkins on the “about” page of the Gin Blossoms’s official website’.
    Where??? I’ve been wallowing in 90s nostalgia (pre-al Qaeda, the internet, social media etc, life seemed much simpler then) and looking at the Hey Jealousy video. Just couldn’t work out which one was Doug Hopkins until I realised he WASN’T in the clip: it shows Scott Johnson instead (short guy with long red hair). Never got a chance to see the band (I’m on the other side of the world), so I’m wondering if there are any clips of Doug Hopkins playing (not just audio recordings)? The man is a virtual ghost with hardly any photos of him available. Such a shame.

    • The Editors says:

      I just watched it, and you’re right…he’s not in the video (also: what a horrible video that is, good Lord). He’s in one of the videos, though…it’s a short clip of him in B&W, spinning sort of drunkenly. I must have gotten the song wrong. I know I saw it.

      One of the realities of that period, of course, is that, simpler though life was, we didn’t record every last thing with our smartphone. Try writing the Lost Horizon site folks about it…if such a thing exists, they will know.

      Thanks for reading.

      • Anna H says:

        There is a little gem at the Lost Horizons tribute website of Doug Hopkins performing … cheesy tv themes. Towards the end he plays a little guitar, but it’s good to see him in action. (He did like that shirt, though–I think he’s wearing it in every image of him I’ve seen, although that would be only about three in total.) They make mention of a 2004 VH1’s True Spin 90’s special episode that contains a 5-min segment with rare live footage and photos of Hopkins, but I can’t find it online. Maybe someone–somewhere–sometime will upload it. Here’s hoping …

  12. Derek Reese says:

    Great article. I believe my favorite lyrics from the song are “if you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down.” It’s so sad and yet so honest. And man does it ever apply to life in general.

  13. Smoke says:

    I stumbled onto this article YEARS after it was written. The reason I came across it was simple – I just did a search for this song, after listening to it on my MP3 player this afternoon. I was curious if anyone still listened to the Gin Blossoms. I listened to it several more times after not having heard it for almost a year. It was my favorite song from that era, and even when I first heard it, I thought it would become a timeless classic. Maybe not for everyone, but for me – it did.

    As influential as those other bands had been, what I loved about the Gin Blossoms was that their own angst was not necessarily worn on their sleeves the way Nirvana’s was. Nirvana paraded their agonies around, and to be honest, I was a little too old for that sort of attitude when they came out.

    People wearing their feelings/attitudes on their sleeves aren’t hard to find. What drew me to the Gin Blossoms wasn’t that they had a “sunny” tempo to accompany their depression, but that it seemed that this was the more realistic way people wear true misery. It isn’t “opera”. It’s a guy trying hard not to let anyone see what anyone with eyes would immediately notice.

    When you’re drunk, but trying very hard to “seem” sober, while spilling your guts to an ex, you MAY be “wearing it on your sleeve”, but you’re also not that aware of just HOW aware others are of your condition.

    No, I’ve never been diagnosed for depression or had a drinking problem, but it seemed more relatable (to me). The over-the-top “fuck you, I’m angry” sound DOES have its place in musical history, but I have a hard time sympathizing with the angry drunk.

    The Gin Blossoms’ sound seemed more like a very sad drunk trying hard not to sway as he staggered down the street; trying to maintain a “dignity” that’s long absent from any corner of the drunkard’s life, except perhaps his imagination. There are few things sadder than someone that’s been broken, but still tries to maintain the illusion (if only to himself) of not being quite so wounded as he obviously is.

    This song was/is a lot more subtle than most from that era. Where Nirvana reflected the second stage of grief, the Gin Blossoms seemed like someone stuck at stage 4 – with stage 5 much to far away to ever be a realistic goal.

    • Ari says:

      My feelings exactly. I loved Hey Jealousy the first time I heard it in the 90’s, as a 13 or 14 year old kid. NME was one of the very first albums I ever bought, and it was for that song. Nirvana had faded from any list of my favorite bands by the time I graduated highschool, and while I can’t say the Gin Blossoms were a favorite band (a lot of their songs did nothing for me) Hey Jealousy always struck me as beautiful and honest.

      If you like this, I recommend The Refreshments’ Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy. This album has the same sort of peppiness but underlying hopeful hopelessness. Extremely well written songs.

    • Mitch says:

      One of the absolute BEST comments ever. Period.

      • Ging Freeccss says:

        “The Gin Blossoms’ sound seemed more like a very sad drunk trying hard not to sway as he staggered down the street; trying to maintain a “dignity” that’s long absent from any corner of the drunkard’s life, except perhaps his imagination. There are few things sadder than someone that’s been broken, but still tries to maintain the illusion (if only to himself) of not being quite so wounded as he obviously is.”

        OMG this is the most accurate description I have ever read.
        reading through this comment and thinking at the back of my mind the lyrics and the sound of Competition smile and Not only numb, it’s like you have written the sound and the feelings of tho song in a single, straight-forward paragraph.

  14. Dan says:

    The line about sitting outside his girlfriends house as she comes with her new man and watches the lights go out, is one of the saddest most compelling lyrics!

  15. Philip Marsh says:

    Just stumbled across this article. I’ve been into the Gin Blossoms since I saw their videos for ‘Til I Hear It From You’ and ‘Follow You Down’ from the album after the one discussed above (‘Congratulations, I’m Sorry’) on VH1. I went back to ‘New Miserable Experience’ later and ‘Hey Jealousy’ has always been one of my favourite songs on it. I back up everything about how lovely the music and Wilson’s vocal delivery are, but the song also contains one of my favourite lyrics of all time – ‘If you don’t expect too much from me / You might not be let down’. The genius is in the word ‘might’ – even though the narrator is lowering the subject’s expectations they still can’t be sure they can live up to them. Subtle, and perfect. Add to that songs like the heartbreaking ‘Until I Fall Away’, ’29’ and ‘Pieces Of The Night’ and you’ve got an album that deserves to be better known, in the UK certainly.

    I’ve been meaning to check their later albums out for a while, but I do feel the need to stand up for the material written after Hopkins was fired. If ‘Congratulations…’ isn’t overall as strong as ‘New Miserable Experience’, it still contains a couple of great rockers (‘Follow You Down’ and ‘Day Job’), and some lovely ballads like ‘Not Only Numb’, ‘As Long As It Matters’ and, especially, the aching ‘Competition Smile’. Definitely worth a listen if you like the first album.

  16. Pete says:

    Lots of good information on that Lost Horizons website. Hopkins went on, post Blossoms, to form a great band in Tempe called The Chimeras (who were forced to change their names to The Pistoleros later). Although the Chimeras also had to kick Hopkins out, there were no hard feelings. The Chimeras normally played “Hold Me Down” live, a Hopkins penned Gin Blossoms song. Unfortunately, I can’t find live recording of it. You can find, however, Hopkins originals Cathedral City, Southbound Train (still performed by Pistoleros) both on the Internet, as well as My Gaurdian Angel, a regional hit in Southwest and Southeast, from The Pistoleros debut album Hang On To Nothing (mid to late 90’s). Really great songs, maybe better than Gin Blossoms stuff. The Chimeras had some other Hopkins influenced songs from their debut album as well that came out shortly after he left in late 93 called Mistaken for Granted which were written by the Zubia brothers but in collaboration, most likely, with Doug when he was in band, which he specifically formed to get back at the Blossoms. Finally, there were a few Hopkins originals played by the Chimeras live, which also were great (Mija Veda) but not recorded, presumably, and lost to history, unless of course you can convince the Pistoleros to play it live. From my observations back then, had things worked out better, this band, with Hopkins and the Zubia brothers working together, would have made it as big as the Gin Blossoms. But things didn’t work out that way, he never got back at them, making the story more tragic.

  17. Michael says:

    I saw the Blossoms last night in Annapolis. They still sound great and Robin Wilson tries very hard to engage the crowd (“hands up”), but there is so little visual interaction between bandmates. I always enjoy them live but get the sense that it’s become a job for them. Maybe the specter of Doug Hopkins remains after all these years. Ironically though, Hopkins’ dismissal allowed us all to hear his music.

  18. Tim Bradley says:

    My all-time favorite Gin Blossoms song is “Lost Horizons” from New Miserable Experience. The anguish Hopkins must have been enduring really comes through, and makes “Hey, Jealousy” look positively giddy by comparison. It is also very, very catchy.

  19. Jean says:

    I always hated the Gin Blossoms because I was just too punk in the 90’s (Ha ha, weren’t we all?). But I secretly did think “Hey Jealousy” was a catchy tune. I heard it in a restaurant last week and now I can’t stop listening to it. It’s such an amazing and brilliant song for the very reasons talked about in this article. I love the line, “All I really want is to be with you, feel like I matter too.”

    Ugh, is this what happens when you turn 40? You like the Gin Blossoms?

  20. Dan S. says:

    I spent a few hours with Robin (GB’s lead singer) recently and I’ve got to give the guys credit for playing 80 dates a year while so many bands of the era have long since disappeared! For those who don’t want acknowledge any quality music post-Hopkins … Just listen to the Grammy nominated “As Long as it Matters” or “Competition Smile”. Some of the newer tracks of the last decade like “Wave Bye-Bye” “Long Time Gone” “Someday Soon” “Go CryBaby” not to mention “‘Til I Hear it from You” and “Allison Road”.

    Giving credit where credit is due doesn’t take away from the fact that Doug Hopkins was incredibly gifted as a songwriter. His music got me hooked to the band more than 20 years ago and I’m still a fan today! I can listen to Gin Blossoms every day and still feel that bittersweet feeling.

    Robin was gracious enough to take time to hang out and it just so happens that he’d just received word of NME going 4X platinum and Congratulations, I’m Sorry 2.5X platinum.

  21. SplittingHairs says:

    You all hit on some great points regarding this song and the band.

    I owe Doug a nod, as this song helped reunite me with a former band mate. I ended our musical relationship by unceremoniously finishing my last track in the studio with; “After the next show, I am done.”

    It must have been a year later that that I heard this tune on the radio. So much about the song mirrored what we were trying to do as a band. After some pride swallowing, I picked up the phone and said, “Did you hear that tune Hey…”

    He interrupted, “Jealousy. It’s very similar to us.”

    We met up to see GB at a venue to a crowd of fifty people. Del Amitri opened for them. A few months later, the Blossoms were doing college tours and selling tons of albums.

    The ripples of what Doug did, however small and insignificant to him, continue on today. Because (at least, in part) of this song, that former band mate and I are still friends today…our kids play sports together.

    “There is no beauty without some strangness in form.” E. A. Poe

    Happy New Year!

  22. Frank M says:

    Really getting an education here, good insightful observations. I just want to chip in something about the cross generational appeal of the GB sound, even if I distill it down to a few of their hits. I’m 63, came of age during the Beatles and subsequent British invasion. Lyrics mattered, but the hook of a melody is what burned into the brain. Songs that “worked” on ubiquitous AM radio succeeded and stayed with you, and they came in rapid succession. What we didn’t know at the time was how much staying power a well crafted tune would have. GB jangle sits on my head where the Byrds memorable tunes do, but they don’t sound redux to me, they’ve got something distinctly 90s. Got to see them live for free in 2003 at local summer festival. What a gift.

  23. Marianne says:

    God I love this article. So well written and from everything else I’ve seen and heard it is really spot on.

  24. Flo says:

    Great article. As for all the people dissing the Gin Blossoms and their decision to oust Doug, it’s easy to make judgements on a situation you have never been in. Dealing with someone who is suffering from depression is never easy, and if it’s your livelihood on the line, you are forced into making decisions that you don’t necessarily like. One thing everyone forgets is that back in the 90’s, depression and alcohol/substance abuse were still somewhat taboo issues and seriously misunderstood. As well as the fact that someone who is hell bent on self destruction or suicide is probably not going to be stopped. It’s obvious that Doug was an incredibly talented person, but he was also a tortured soul who couldn’t get past his demons. And I don’t think the situation would have been any different had he still been in the band with their success, it may have made it even worse with the same finale outcome.

    As far as “revenge”–the guys are doing what so many of us would like to do. Playing gigs, traveling and making a living at it. Just because they aren’t doing it in a big way doesn’t mean that they aren’t happy with what they are doing. My brother was a professional musician for years and never made it big, but was never happier than when he was in front of a crowd, playing his guitar and singing.

  25. Raul says:

    There is a VH1 clip about the tragic departure. The lead singer asked to change the line from drink to think, because he was sick of the drinking issue. They actually are a pretty good band. A little to soft for me back in the day, but I just bought the greatest hits a few minutes ago.

  26. Luther says:

    Watched a show tonight where they played NME start to finish and Wilson said, “Thank you to Doug Hopkins and his beautiful song writing.” He even told a story about Doug on a trip through Wyoming. They had fun and played great, they are all talented musicians. I have no doubt the events affected the entire path of the band permanently. How could it not? Huge credit to them for continuing on the songs that I’ve known for 25+ years.

  27. jess says:

    Been listening to Gin Blossoms a lot during the quarantine. This article and so many of the comments are a treasure.

  28. Greyman says:

    I heard “Sick City Sometimes” by the Buzzcocks – noted the similarity to “Hey, Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms. Wondered if anyone else had noticed this – found this article.

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