by Matthew Sweet
~ An unexpected love song ~
Matthew Sweet got famous for his one MTV hit, “Girlfriend,” with the anime video back before anime was cool. If “Girlfriend” shows up 6 months later, he probably doesn’t get invited to play on this benefit album, but thank goodness he did. The whole album is covers of Victoria Williams songs as a charity fundraiser for her medical condition. This was back when almost no musicians had any kind of medical insurance and GoFundMe wasn’t going to exist for another 20 years.
What we get is a heavily-strummed guitar-driven love song with his vocals just washing over us and an arpeggiated banjo line plucking its way underneath the verse. Despite the heavy country music elements of the production, this is clearly a mid-90s alt-rock radio tune that should have been a much bigger hit than it was ever going to be on a relief album where he’s only about the 8th most famous name, even if he had one of the two or three best songs on it