How Pavement song ‘Harness Your Hopes’ rose from B-side ashes
A few years ago, something strange happened to Stephen Malkmus. The Pavement singer was in Portland with his daughter, strolling around a bakery, when he heard a song he couldn’t quite place. It was one of those earworms you’d hear in an advert or maybe catch at a gig once, then never remember where you first heard it, let alone what it was called. Then it dawned on him it was his own song, ‘Harness Your Hopes’.
Recorded decades before tickling over the speakers in that bakery, the song was a discarded Pavement B-side, recorded in 1997, shelved until its eventual CD-only release on 1999’s Spit On A Stranger, where it admittedly didn’t make waves. It was for that reason Malkmus initially thought they were playing ‘Tumbling Dice’ by The Rolling Stones rather than a song he’d penned.
Even the most devoted Pavement fans would’ve forgotten ‘Harness Your Hopes’ had it not made a surprise appearance on the extended issue of Brighten The Corners in 2008, alongside a vast amount of previously recorded material for the album. However, 2008 marked the start of the upwards trajectory of ‘Harness Your Hopes’.
It happened slowly, but over recent years, the song managed to climb to number one on the band’s Spotify without any promotion or attention. It wound up getting over 28 million plays, far surpassing the more credible hit 1990s hit, ‘Cut Your Hair’. The prevailing theory floating around Reddit was that the song must’ve been randomly included in a generic playlist, which Malkmus seconded to Stereogum, saying: “I heard it was on a playlist or something. I’m not an expert on Spotify, but, you know, one of those ‘Monday Moods’ or whatever the fuck they do.”
Eventually, a data alchemist at Spotify took an interest. He found that a sudden jump in plays happened in 2017 – right around the time Spotify had switched its autoplay present from off to on for all its 132million users. The autoplay feature cues up music that sounds similar (by an algorithm’s judgement) to what users had just been listening to. So in the case of ‘Harness Your Hopes’, this random judgement wound up greatly benefitting the band, based purely on its ability to sound similar to a lot of other songs.
That might be the most curious element of its success. While its spoken word-esque vocals and driving guitar lines were a staple of late 1990s alternative, the lyrics were non-sequitur and bizarre: “Show me a word that rhymes with pavement / And I won’t kill your parents and roast them on a spit / And don’t you try to etch it or permanently sketch it / Or you’re gonna catch a bad, bad cold.” Not exactly similar to many songs.
In another non-intentional development, the song has taken TikTok by storm as its users attempt to decode its lyrics. At present, the song has racked up nearly 36 thousand videos, which Malkmus’ daughter was semi-impressed with. “She was like, ‘It’s trending, but in a certain way, not in a big way,'” he joked.
No matter what algorithmic glitches conspired to help it on its way, the resurgence of ‘Harness Your Hopes’ is a testament to the band’s “whatever happens, happens” attitude. They pioneered the modern indie sound without even having a designated lead guitar player, and notably without having to write many ballads, so massive unintentional success suits them down to the ground as the true pioneers of ’90s slacker culture.
