“Try” by Michael Penn

"Try" opens Resigned, Michael Penn's 1997 album, and he wrote it, sings it and plays guitar on it. Brendan O'Brien produced and mixed it and plays the bass himself, with Dan McCarroll on drums, Patrick Warren on keyboards and Nick DiDia recording.

Then there's the video. Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Boogie Nights Penn had scored, shot it with his film crew and some of the cast while that movie was still in post-production, all in one unbroken take of more than three minutes. Penn strides down a hallway in downtown Los Angeles, billed as the longest in North America, past vignettes nodding to Boogie Nights and retro pop culture, including a dance marathon out of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, while Philip Seymour Hoffman appears twice, first handing him a microphone and a guitar, later manning a boom mic.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.