Pavement celebrated a major milestone this weekend: “Harness Your Hopes,” a B-side that was later included on the 1999 EP. Spit on a strangerhas achieved RIAA Gold status.
“Harness Your Hopes” was originally recorded for Pavement's fourth studio album. Light up the cornersbut frontman Stephen Malkmus opted not to include it on the album “for no good reason” and relegated it to B-side status. However, years later, “Harness Your Hopes” received a huge boost in streaming numbers around 2017, and since then it was viral on TikTok and has now been certified to have sold over 500,000 units.
The song's original rise in notoriety hasn't been tied to anything specific, but stereogum attributed the increase in streaming numbers to a 2017 change in Spotify's algorithm. It then exploded in popularity around 2020, when TikTok users began posting choreographed dances to the floor.
“Harness Your Hopes” has since become one of Pavement’s most beloved songs, and the band has included it in their show setlists 75 times since their reunion in 2022. The band reissued its Spit on a stranger EP in 2022 and released a music video for “Harness Your Hopes” directed by Alex Ross Perry and featuring yellow jackets star Sophie Thatcher.
Revisit our Top 10 Pavement Songs list, which includes plenty of other great Pavement songs that aren't “Harness Your Hopes.”
Zoomers made a fifteen-year-old pavement B-side go viral on Tiktok, resulting in the band's first RIAA certified gold record. pic.twitter.com/CuYLKbvE9S
– rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) May 19, 2024
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