Remember That Song: Float On
The breakthrough Modest Mouse hit became the song of the summer in 2004.
Image credit Epic Records
“I JUST WANT to feel good for a day,” said Isaac Brock, lead singer and songwriter of Modest Mouse in a rare interview with AV Club in 2004 when asked about the change in tone in hit single Float On.
The single, the band’s biggest to date, and its album Good News for People Who Love Bad News, turned 20 this year.
At the time, Modest Mouse had more than a modest following among the indie-rock community, but hadn’t quite broken into the mainstream. The band was also known for its lyrical themes that conveyed an overarching of sense of dread, darkness, and American decay.
Critically acclaimed albums This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About and The Lonesome Crowded West built up a following and saw the band playing mid to large sized clubs. This led to a major label deal with Epic Records, with which they released The Moon & Antartica in 2002.
The album received rave reviews, and sold a few hundred thousand copies, but did not have a hit mainstream single. Subsequently, the band licensed Gravity Rides Everything, probably the catchiest single-like song on the album, to a Nissan Quest minivan ad campaign. Lead singer Isaac Brock was unapologetic over the matter, as the band did not come from a moneyed background. He said at the time that it was necessary to ensure financial stability for the band to continue.
It was around this time I first heard Modest Mouse. I was a punk kid, riding in someone’s car on the way home from what was likely a punk concert, and Dark Center of the Universe, the third track on the album came on. I was hooked, and bought the album the next day on the way home from work. I illegally downloaded the other two, and felt like my musical tastes had vastly expanded overnight.
Note: I’ve since purchased physical copies of all available Modest Mouse LPs. Please forgive me.
Good News for People Who Love Bad News
After the moderate success of The Moon & Antartica, the band went through some personnel changes. Benjamin Weikel of The Helio Sequence replaced founding drummer Jeremiah Green, and Tom Peloso joined as a second bass player. Dann Gallucci of Murder City Devils had re-joined to play guitar prior to recording the follow-up for Epic Records.
Due to the changes, the band was late in delivering the finished product to Epic. With the turmoil and consolidation going on with major labels (illegal downloading a big part of this, again, I am sorry), Epic was cutting bands with lower performing sales. According to Brock in a recent Rolling Stone interview, Modest Mouse was due to be cut, but was saved by an accountant who apparently saw the potential.
But on March 8th, 2004, just as Spring was rearing its head across much of the country, Float On was released as the lead single to Good News for People Who Love Bad News, slated for release a month later.
A Positive Turn for a Negative Band?
I remember hearing the song debut on what was then 99.1 WHFS, a now-defunct, but then-influential alternative rock station covering Washington and Baltimore. I was driving to pick up lunch, windows down, on what was probably the first somewhat warm day of the year.
I was taken aback to hear Modest Mouse on a mainstream station, but the song’s instantly catchy guitar intro laid to rest any thoughts of the band selling out. This was a good song. And besides, the band was already on Epic Records and was in a Nissan commercial. Let them have their moment.
What struck many Modest Mouse fans about Float On was how upbeat and positive the song was, compared to past material. Previous albums had a sense of dread, darkness, American decay. But this song? A chorus and refrain, saying:
“Don’t worry, even if things end up a bit too heavy, we’ll all float, alright?”
According to Brock (in the AV Club interview), this was deliberate:
I was just kind of fed up with how bad shit had been going, and how dark everything was, with bad news coming from everywhere. Our president is just a fucking daily dose of bad news! Then you've got the well-intentioned scientists telling us that everything is fucked. I just want to feel good for a day.
Place yourself in March 2004 when Float On hit the airwaves.
The United States was well into a controversial war in Iraq led by unpopular President George W. Bush, who was nonetheless a possibility to win reelection against a complicit, centrist Democratic party candidate.
I had just turned 23. Several of my friends were deployed, with varying levels of complicated feelings on the matter. One would end up dead by the end of the year, another wounded. For many of us who had grown disillusioned with the war and the state of the country in general, the situation seemed hopeless.
But Float On offered a momentary escape into a feel good theme of just floating away. Floating away in a pool, in the ocean, down a river, surfing a crowd at a music festival, or lying down stoned and floating away in your mind while listening to a good tune.
Whatever it was to the listener, it resonated big time.
The album would go on to receive widespread acclaim and sell over a million copies in the United States alone that year, eventually hitting two million. Float On became a certified mainstream hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts.
The band hit the late night circuit, including an appearance on Saturday Night Live. Good News for People Who Love Bad News received a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album, with Float On receiving a nomination for Best Rock Song.
To this day, Float On remains the band’s most popular song.
On Spotify, Float On has nearly 425 million plays, with 2007’s Dashboard coming in a distant second at 105 million plays. It is a mainstay of their live set, having been played more than any other song in the catalog, according to fan-contributed data at Setlist.fm.
Modest Mouse is still active today, having last released The Golden Casket in 2021. However, Brock remains the only original member. Drummer Jeremiah Green re-joined the band in 2005 and remained until taking a leave of absence for undisclosed (at the time) reasons in 2022. Green and the band announced his cancer diagnosis in late December of that year, and he died just days later on December 31st, 2022.
In 2024, the band co-headlined an indie-alternative rock nostalgia mega-tour with The Pixies and Cat Power, and indicated plans for a 20th anniversary tour for Good News for People Who Love Bad News with the 2004 band lineup to follow.
Given the unpredictability of Brock and his band, I’ll believe it when it’s announced and started. But I might have to make a run at it if it comes anywhere close.