“Selling The Drama” by Live

"Selling the Drama" was the opening shot from Throwing Copper, the first single Live pulled from their 1994 album, and it arrives with the fervor of a tent revival. Ed Kowalczyk, who wrote the words, has said he set out to write about the leader and the led, about how political and religious figures keep the public in hand. Only after the band had it on tape did he catch the other edge of it: the song fit a band like his just as well, a group with a stage, a microphone and people listening.

Kowalczyk and Chad Gracey, the band's drummer, both say it came together naturally in roughly an hour, and it has that fell-out-whole feel, earnest to the bone. The music credit is shared by Kowalczyk, Gracey, Chad Taylor and Patrick Dahlheimer. Jerry Harrison produced it with the band, Gary Kurfirst served as executive producer, Lou Giordano engineered and Tom Lord-Alge mixed, and the Radioactive Records release comes out big, clean and sure of itself.

It became the first of three Live singles to top Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart, crossed over as far as 43 on the Hot 100, and did its best business overseas in the Netherlands, where it climbed to 15. The video, shot in the woods and flipping between black-and-white and color, has Kowalczyk ripping pages from a book, and when the band played the song at Woodstock '94, that performance became their track on the festival's double album.

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