It is every songwriter's dream to score that one career-defining hit that gets tons of radio airplay, is often covered by other artists, and featured in commercials, TV shows, and movies, thereby making the writer of said song some nice bank in the process.
For the rock band Cake, this dream became a reality in 1996 when "The Distance", from their second album Fashion Nugget, stormed onto alt. rock and modern rock radio playlists, where it remains to this day.
Amazingly, the song did not actually enter the Billboard Singles chart, which is hard to believe when you consider just how prevalent that song was at the time of its release, but it did reach #35 on Billboards Radio Airplay chart. Even that chart placement seems ridiculously modest for a song that quickly become a pop culture touchstone in the era of grunge.
What's so fittingly apropos about the song is that, despite the fact that it is the one song Cake singer John McCrea's was born to "sing", with his deadpan delivery providing a fitting counterpoint to the track's unshakable musical propulsion, the truth of the matter is that he didn't actually write the song.
Instead, the song was penned by Greg Brown, the band's guitarist at the time.
While McCrea has long been the band's singer and main songwriter, Brown was a sporadic contributor, nabbing three writing credits on the band's debut album, Motorcade of Generosity, but, sadly, only two on Fashion Nugget.
Luckily for Brown, one of those songs was "The Distance".
On one hand, the idiosyncratic band from Sacramento finally had a radio hit, but, on the other, said hit had not been written by McCrea, which, one surmises, could have become a source of friction between McCrea and Brown.
This is confirmed, of course, by the fact that Brown quit the band during the demo sessions for their next album.
With high hopes of cashing in further on his newfound stature as a hit songwriter, Brown formed the new wave/pop band Deathray with fellow Cake expatriate Victor Damiani, but the band stumbled into a minefield of Spinal Tap-like label antics that killed their debut album in its tracks just as their first single "Now That I Am Blind" was picking up steam on modern rock radio stations.
In the years since, Brown worked with Weezer members Rivers Cuomo and Matt Sharp on a smattering of projects before Deathray appeared on the Open Season movie soundtrack in 2008.
Brown reunited with his Cake bandmates in 2011, playing guitar on "Bound Away" from their 2011 CD, Showroom Of Compassion.
His song, "The Distance", was recently re-recorded for a Geico commercial in 2016.
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rock royalties