four by Blues Traveler

four, the fourth album from Blues Traveler (lowercase title and all), came out on A&M on September 13, 1994, and it's the record that finally carried the Princeton, New Jersey, band out of the jam-and-festival grind and into the mainstream. These were road dogs known for sliding one song into the next on stage and for starting the H.O.R.D.E. touring festival, and four keeps that loose, good-time spirit while tightening the songs up for the radio.

The engine is John Popper, singing in a rush of words and blowing harmonica like he's trying to outrun the rest of the band, with a warm mix of blues rock, folk rock and southern swagger rolling along behind him. "Run-Around" is the big one, a bouncy, harmonica-led singalong built to be hummed in traffic, and "Hook" follows it with a sly, circling melody that hangs around for days.

The pair did the business: "Run-Around" climbed to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and "Hook" to 23, both made the top 20 of the rock charts, mainstream and modern alike, and the album itself peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200. The RIAA eventually certified it six times platinum, and "Run-Around" won the 1995 Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group. Success on that scale proved hard to hold on to: bassist Bobby Sheehan died in 1999, and A&M dropped them in 2002.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.