“Cailin” by Unwritten Law

"Cailin" is Scott Russo's song for his daughter, Cailin Russo, and it's the tune that finally got the San Diego band Unwritten Law onto the charts. Russo wrote the words about her, and the band wraps them in a warm, surging punk-pop rush that sounds made for summer radio.

It almost never got there. Interscope had put out three singles from the album without a chart hit and was ready to move on, as guitarist Rob Brewer later told MTV, even though the band had always pegged "Cailin" as their radio song. Their manager, Bill Silva, took matters into his own hands and got it onto influential West Coast alternative stations like KROQ, where listeners grabbed hold of it fast. It never came out as a proper single, yet it gave the band their first chart entry, peaking at 28 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks.

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