Nada Surf – Popular

Electric Lady, late 1995: spoken advice, Ric Ocasek’s big guitars

Nada Surf released Popular in May 1996 as the lead single from their debut album High/Low (Elektra, June 1996). Matthew Caws (guitar, vocals), Daniel Lorca (bass) and Ira Elliot (drums) recorded the album at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village in about three weeks before Christmas 1995, with Ric Ocasek producing and Bruce Calder engineering. Caws had handed Ocasek a demo cassette outside the Knitting Factory; the Cars frontman called back and offered to produce.

Each verse delivers sarcastic teenage advice in spoken word, drawn from Gloria Winters’ book Penny’s Guide to Teen-Age Charm and Popularity (Winters shares a writing credit). Live, friends used to read from the book during empty verse slots; in the studio, mixer Bryce Goggin pushed Caws’ voice to the front after a short trade with Catherine Talese. The choruses hit with thick electric guitars Ocasek layered for impact, then open into a noisier finish. The band already knew the songs from an earlier demo line-up; Ocasek favoured first takes and daytime hours. High/Low also carried Treehouse as a follow-up single; Popular remained the track that defined the debut for MTV viewers.

Elektra moved the alternative-radio date forward to May 1996 as interest grew. Popular reached number 11 on Billboard’s Alternative chart and number 51 on the Airplay chart; US rules kept an album-only track off the Hot 100. The Bayonne High School video put cliques and cheerleaders on MTV. After the attention faded, Elektra dropped the band; later albums rebuilt a long career. This piece stays with the 1995 Electric Lady sessions and the High/Low single. Elektra’s campaign treated the spoken verses as a novelty hook, but the band kept playing the song as a loud guitar chorus live.