In the summer of 1997, Sugar Ray released “Fly,” the lead single from its second album, Floored. It's a perfectly ‘90s radio-friendly hit that mixes rock and punk with reggae and ska. It’s also sung by a shirtless white guy with frosted tips.
Critics were quick to dub Sugar Ray a one-hit wonder, and they were kind of right. Sugar Ray never quite reacquired the chart-topping heights of “Fly,” though subsequent singles “Someday,” "Every Morning" and 2001’s “When It’s Over” came close. 14:59, the follow-up album to Floored, found the group trying to shake the one-hit wonder moniker by implying its “15 minutes of fame” (a phrase inspired by Andy Warhol) weren’t quite up.
But in a final indication of a slow slide to nostalgia, the band made a cameo in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie. That film feels like a time capsule of the early 2000s due to its cast of Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Rowan Atkinson, its aged CGI, and its ham-fisted Shaggy-and-Scooby-are-stoners gags. It’s also proof the ‘90s really lasted until about 2004.
If a journey back to the late ’90s sounds like a good time, Sugar Ray will be headlining the main stage at the EQT Pittsburgh Three Rivers Regatta on Friday.
Though Sugar Ray’s lineup has changed twice in the past few years, the music is the same — the band’s most recent album came out in 2009 — so take a trip back in time, minus the frosted tips, hopefully.
