“Drive By” by Train

song info

    “Drive By” by Train (official video) is a pop song.

    
    U.S. Billboard Hot 100: #40
    Radio Songs: #47
    Digital Songs: #54
    On-Demand Songs: #42
    Adult Contemporary: #2 (two), 21 weeks on chart, peak #1 (one)
    Canadian Hot 100: #25
     Billboard information for the week of Sept 22, 2012
     Billboard chart listings courtesy of Billboard Magazine

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/dr/driveby.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “Drive By” is a song by American pop rock band Train from their sixth studio album, California 37. It was released in the United States as the album’s lead single on January 10, 2012. The song was written by lead singer Patrick Monahan and Norwegian songwriting duo Espen Lind, Amund Bjørklund, the same team responsible for Train’s 2010 hit single “Hey, Soul Sister”. “Drive By” peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band’s third top 10 hit in the US. It was awarded a platinum certification by the RIAA on April 19, 2012, for more than 1 million sales in the US, and a double platinum certification on July 23, 2012, for more than 2 million sales in the U.S. Internationally, the song became a top ten hit in 13 countries. Train performed the song on television series 90210 in the episode “Blood Is Thicker Than Mud”, which aired on March 13, 2012. Train also performed a parody entitled “Five By” with Elmo and Count von Count for an episode of Sesame Street.

Composition

    “Drive By” is a pop rock song. The instrumentation consists of “buoyant acoustic riffs and a hook-laden melody”. Lead singer Patrick Monahan sings in a characteristic “sing-talk vocal croon”.

Critical reception

Billboard gave the song a positive review stating:

If at first you succeed — why not try again? For the first single from its forthcoming “California 37,” Train returns to the Espionage, the Norwegian songwriting and production duo of Espen Lind and Amund Bjørklund that helped the group put together its 2010 comeback smash “Hey Soul Sister.” “Drive By” starts with a staccato guitar strum and a percussive thump that certainly recalls its predecessor, with a slight ethnic flavor that makes it recall a Bar Mitzvah reception. Frontman Pat Monahan semi-speaks the [verses] in tuneful, rap-like cadence, then turns to smooth pop singing for the choruses. The lyric, however, is a bit darker, with Monahan’s protagonist trying to convince a one-night-stand that he really wants to “get down to the more-than-friends” at last. We bet she’s heard that from all the pop singers, but Monahan pleads with enough joyful exuberance that she — and we — might just buy it.

Music video

    A music video for the song was first released onto YouTube on February 15, 2012.

    It opens with Monahan on the phone with his former girlfriend, who scolds him, saying that he was the one who left, before saying that she has to get to work, and hangs up. Monahan then goes to the garage and gets into his blue 1967 Pontiac Firebird, and starts driving through San Francisco, at an intersection being joined by a Jimmy Stafford driving a yellow Chevrolet Camaro and Scott Underwood driving a red Ford Mustang. Then the scene shifts to Monahan, Underwood and Stafford performing together under a tree, and Monahan explains how he met his former girlfriend: she works as the tour guide at the winery that Monahan visited. Tthey participated in a three-legged race, crushed grapes and tasted some wine. However, their relationship is merely a one-night stand, as Monahan, after waking up in bed next to her, leaves before she wakes up.

    Back to the present, the band arrives at some sort of classic car meeting. Later he leads the whole fleet of classic cars to the same winery, where he met his girlfriend. She is on the balcony giving some guests a tour. She sees a procession of all the cars from the car driving up to the winery. Monahan leads them in the front in a parade round the parking lot of the winery, after which he stops his car at the front entrance. He then gets out and sings the last verse of the song (“Oh I swear to you, I’ll be there for you, this is not a drive-by”), eventually reconciles with her. The final scene shows Monahan and the tour guide driving together in Monahan’s car, laughing and joking together.

—from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedia’s block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedia’s original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)

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