November 27, 2025 • 16 mins
Formed in Vancouver by Trevor Guthrie, David Bowman and Ken Lewko, Indecision would sign with Universal Music and rebrand themselves as soulDecsion (lowercase S, uppercase D) in 1999 as to avoid conflict with an American band who had already squatted on the name.
Styled and Marketed as a boyband for their year 2000 debut album ‘No One Does it Better’ soulDecision were absolutely not one when it came to their sound, or their overall musical ethos.
This is the story of their massive hit 'Faded' with newly unearthed audio from the band themselves.
Written by Clayton Taylor for iHeartRadio
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Ruby Carr and welcome to another special episode of
Encore where we take a look at some of the
iHeartRadio team's favorite Canadian songs from the past and this
week we have the story of soul Decision faded. You
know the songs just making people feel something.
Pleasure to work on this song with her, but do
you know the history? It's a struggle making any kind
of record. I don't always have the direction or concept.
(00:22):
This is Encore, an in-depth look at the stories behind
the music. Here's iHeartRadio's Ruby Carr.
Indecision. That's what I was experiencing when I had to
decide which one of Soul Decision's Canadian mega hits to
profile for this episode of Encore, that being faded or oh,
(00:42):
it's kind of crazy, of course. Indecision is also what
Soul Decision were originally called when they formed in the
early to mid-nineties as music students in North Vancouver at
Capellano College.
Fun fact, Soul Decision as Indecision actually had two non-album
radio singles that definitely received airplay even before they had
(01:05):
a sniff of a record deal, 1997's Tonight and Not Enough,
the former of which has the single cheesiest video, This
Side of Boyz II Men. Seriously, they're dressed in oversized suits,
bopping around like real cool.
Cool dudes in what appears to be kind of like
a jazz club while video vixens writhe around all sultry, uh,
(01:30):
via way too many nineties crossfades and wipes with a
G-fuk inspired beat behind the lyrics, which of course read
as the incredibly subtle, Tonight is the night we're gonna
make it right because tonight's the night we're gonna make love.
I'm sorry, it's just the best. I could not, not
(01:50):
talk about it.
Anyway, formed in Vancouver by Trevor Guthrie, David Bowman, and
Ken Luco, Indecision would sign with Universal Music and rebrand
themselves as Soul Decision, lowercase s, uppercase D in 1999
as to avoid conflict with an American band who already
had squatted on the name, uh, or maybe according to
(02:12):
the guys up to.
5 other bands.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Now I knew you
guys as Indecision. Yeah, now it's it's Soul Decision. What's
up with that? Why the name change? First of all,
that's the first question. First things first here the name change.
I'll let can't handle this one. Well, there's about 5
bands in the world that have the same name as us,
so for legal reasons we have to change it. Yeah,
but I haven't heard of the other 4. So why
did you guys have to change it? Well, because
(02:36):
Because of trademarks and stuff and it would have just
caused us a lot of hassles and uh we end
up being really happy with the sole decision actually it's
worked out really well. Basically, um, we wanted to keep
something that was close to the original name.
And we, we, we just brainstormed, I guess a bit
and we said that we like, you know, we wanted
it similar, we wanted the decision in there, we're involved
in every decision that that it's made in the band
(02:57):
and um we make our decisions based on instinct, you know,
and gut, soul, soul decision. It worked
it worked.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Styled and marketed as a boy band for their year
2000 debut album, No One Does It Better. Seriously, if
you look at some of the photos of them that
exist online, you would.
Occasionally have trouble distinguishing their look from B44. Soul Decision
were absolutely not one when it came to their sound though,
or their overall musical ethos. For starters, they were way
(03:25):
more of a kind of soulful, soft rock meets R&B
hybrid than a straight up pop group. Kind of like
if the aforementioned Boyz II Men met George Michael and
then mashed up with like a little bit of Savage Garden.
Certainly, as the band would quickly tell you, they were
not the Canadian NSYNC.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Canada's answer to NSYNC is not really.
It's not really right because we're like we're actually a band.
We actually play our own instruments, write our own stuff,
and program it all and that kind of stuff. So,
so that's how we answer that. I mean, it's flattering.
Thank you. You know, like it's cool. Like like NSYNC
is like ginormously huge and has, you know, I mean
that's cool, but in the whole aspect of, you know,
(04:07):
how we got here and how we do things, it's
pretty kind of, you know, night and day.
And I can't dance.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, as you just heard them mention too much, Soul
Decision wrote and composed the vast majority of their own
music with their debut album almost entirely composed either by
Guthrie himself or the band as a whole. So it
was actually quite a surprise.
At the time when Soul Decision made the executive decision
to fly all the way across the globe to Australia
(04:35):
to work with Savage Garden producer Charles Fisher on their
official debut album, No One Does It Better. No,
Speaker 2 (04:41):
we met Charles, and we were down in LA writing
at the time.
And uh we had kind of a list because the
album was pretty much already done and compiled. We had
produced it ourselves and we just wanted to bring somebody
in to kind of um upgrade a few things and
change a few arrangements and stuff like that around and
he was on the the kind of the shortlist of
who we'd like to work with because we like Savage
Garden and um he happened to be in LA at
(05:02):
the same time, went to Jerry's Deli, Jerry's Jerry's Deli
on Ventura Boulevard, and we sat down.
He listened to the CED and he said, Yeah, I'm in,
and that took about like 20 minutes and the next
thing we knew in about I don't know how much
longer later we were flying across the Pacific.
And doing the album, so it was great.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
The band would explain that while it was definitely a
worthwhile trip to travel to Australia to work with Charles,
they were actually providing him with a nearly finished product.
The guys had been writing and grinding since the Indecision days,
and if anything, Charles helped them scale production back.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We had all, yeah, we co-produced it with him. We actually,
the album was like pretty much 70 to 80% done.
And really just brought Charles in to kind of um
simplify some of the songs. We had a lot of
uh really kind of kind of complicated programs that overproduced.
It was overproduced really, so he just really stripped some
stuff away and we had some strings. So it was
very Charles has pretty much let us do what we wanted. Yeah,
I think there's a fear of ours too because some
producers will come in and put their sound on it
(05:57):
and you basically can go for coffee and come back
when it's done, but it will sound like a Mut
Lang record all the time. Oh.
Woo, it wasn't a jab. I love it. Shanaya, you
were wrong.
It's all good.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Woo, Matt Lang catching some strays. One final point about
Soul Decision at the time of No One Does It
Better's release, they were a bit older, no shade at all.
I'm just saying these were men in their late 20s.
They were a man band.
Despite their youthful appeal and aforementioned boy band adjacent marketing,
(06:30):
it was actually refreshing how Soul Decision kept it real
in interviews when asked about what they represented in terms
of musicality and maturity, and judging by this next answer about.
In the music industry, it feels like something that was
a bit of a hot button issue for them.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I wanted
to ask you about ageism in show business. What are
your opinions are on that, because it seems that if
you know we haven't made our mark by the age
of 30, we're kind of over the hill.
I think that's a bunch of shit. Dave, yeah, sorry,
that's right, politically correct. No, do you have any opinions
(07:09):
on it? No, I think my opinion's just been said
right there. Whatever. Isn't Ricky Martin over 30, and he
hit large when he was, yeah, like I mean, I'm
just talking about the whole trend in like 17-year-old girls
getting up there and strutting their stuff, and you know,
I think to be, oh jeez, OK, I think it's
kind of.
Disgusting. Yeah, I think it's sad in the sense that
(07:31):
people aren't viewed for what they can offer. Like they're
not valued. It's basically, you know, if you're young and
you've got these looks happening and stuff or whatever, like
you almost have more value than if someone who's, they
might be a little older, who might not be like,
you know, you know what I mean? Like it's too bad,
but I think that eventually that if you really have something,
(07:51):
some kind of talent and you really work hard, I
think that'll eventually show because, you know what, I know
what I was like at 19 and I was.
I was a, you know, a punk asshole, and I
wouldn't shade that, you know what I mean? Like I
wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now. I
don't think any of us would be able to be
doing what we're doing now if it wasn't for the
fact that we're, you know, older than that. Like that's,
you know what I mean, like just wisdom and knowledge
that you gained along there. I
Speaker 1 (08:12):
don't know. OK, so technically the first single from No
One Does It Better was the subject of this episode,
the super smash hit Faded. But if you're currently yelling
at your iHeartRadio app or other podcast app of choice, I.
Yes, no, Ruby, I know I heard the song Oh,
It's Kind of Crazy on the radio way before Faded,
(08:33):
and it's at the beginning of their music video. Uh,
you would also be correct, it's true. An original non-album
indecision version of Oh, It's Kinda Crazy was first released
in Canada as far back as 1998, but was retooled
and re-released as No One Does It Better's second single.
So for all intents and purposes, let's roll with Faded
(08:54):
being single number one.
Sorry to all the soul decision truthers out there. Faded
was released in December 1999 in Canada and May of
2000 in the US and internationally. By the time the
song hit America, it had already hit number one on
the RPM charts here in Canada, and Soul Decision had
booked an opening slot with the one and only Christina
(09:17):
Aguilera in North America. So success was expected and achieved.
Hitting the Billboard Hot 100 in July of 2000 at
number 94, it would eventually climb to a resounding number
22 on the charts and spent no less than 20
weeks on the list. Pressure that didn't seem to bother Trevor, Dave,
or Ken. Everybody's
Speaker 2 (09:37):
really happy. Do you, do you feel any kind of
pressure like, oh, all these people are giving so much
attention that, oh, you know, you have to carry it through,
you have to be the band.
That makes it for Canada.
I don't know. We really think about things like that. No,
I mean, the bottom line is that it's either good
music is good music, no matter if it comes from wherever,
from Bangladesh or Canada or wherever, and we're gonna let,
(09:59):
let our songs do the talking, you know what I mean?
So hopefully our songs are good enough that people are
gonna enjoy them, you know, I mean that's all we
can do. But do we want to kick some ass
and represent Canada? Hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's not hard to see why Faded was a success,
by the way. The song oozes charisma, it's danceable, soulful, futuristic,
and groovy in a way that always kind of teeters
on cheesiness, but I mean, it was the year 2000
after all, and it charms you all the same.
Lyrically, the song is flirtatious in all the ways you
(10:30):
might expect of, say, a Maroon 5 song, but with
a sort of carefree swag, certainly not seen in the
music of traditional boy bands. From the very first line,
Guthrie makes his intentions known. He is going to move
in nice and close, and ain't nobody going to interrupt
his game. But wait, is that what he says?
(10:51):
It took me a really long time and I almost
gave up hope, but after listening to countless re-uploads online,
I finally found the mythical, dirty version of the songtrack
that actually subs in Move in Nice and Close with
Take Off All Your Clothes, which, considering how we started
this episode, makes so much sense. I see you sole
(11:13):
decision after Dark Edition.
But that's not all, there's actually another version of Faded
that despite being what I would assume was the official
version of the track, has unfortunately been lost to the
sands of time whenever you hear the song on the
radio nowadays. Although it's usually replaced with an instrumental breakdown
these days.
Days around the 2 minute mark of the album version
(11:35):
of the track Faded includes a guest verse from Canadian
rapper Thrust, who was most notably featured on the groundbreaking
1998 hip hop single Northern Touch with the Rascals, Checkmate
Chocola and Cardinal Offill.
Thrust was also featured in the somewhat wacky music video
for Faded, what appears at first to be your kind
(11:55):
of your run of the mill cool dudes playing music
video with intercut snapshots of the guys lounging at a
swanky house party in a grungy apartment building and then
performing in an enclosed studio room. Thrust has his own
room as well. Quickly devolves to include blink and you'll
miss it inclusions of.
A lady blindfolding her partner and trapping him in a
(12:17):
standing cage while she vacuums around him, a woman laundering money,
as in hanging bills on a clothesline, guys playing indoor basketball,
a frustrated and creepy writer at a typewriter crumpling pages,
kids skipping rope, and an old lady taking sexy photos
of a randomly jacked dude.
Yeah, I don't know, man. I am tired. These Canadian
(12:39):
music videos from the late 90s, early 2000s, they are
too much. We need an entirely separate podcast to decipher
these videos.
I'm going to wildly speculate that the inclusion of Thrust's
verse was a last minute decision, especially considering on a
much music special that featured both Soul Decision and Thrust
just before the album dropped, they all confirmed they had
(13:01):
not hooked up with each other at the time of
the song's recording.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
You guys didn't
bring uh Thrust to Australia with you. Why? We did not.
you didn't download that, um, because you know what, because really,
realistically at the, at the time, uh, we really weren't
sure who.
We're gonna use, but then we saw the Rascals Northern
Touch video, and we saw, we saw this man at
(13:24):
the very end, and we went, oh, that's the guy,
that's the guy. So that video is like a staple
here at Mum. Every, every maybe second day you'll see
that video.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Soul Decision would piggyback the success of Faded with the
previously mentioned re-release of Ooh, It's Kind of Crazy, as
well as 3rd and 4th singles, No One Does It
Better and Gravity in 2000 before finishing off 2001 with
final single, Let's Do It Right.
And all of the songs achieved respectable amounts of success,
but none with the real cultural impact of Faded. At
(13:54):
the 2001 Juno Awards, Soul Decision would be nominated for
Best Album for No One Does It Better, losing to
Barreaked Ladies Maroon. Faded would be nominated for Best Single
and lose to Nelly Furtado's I'm Like a Bird, and
Soul Decision themselves would be nominated for Best Group, again,
losing to those pesky Barenaked Ladies.
(14:15):
Unfortunately, Soul Decision would never be able to top the
success they found with Faded, and no one does it better.
Despite going platinum, Soul Decision would leave major label MCA
Records by the time they released their second album, Shady
Satin Drug on their own label, but the album would
not turn out to be a success. In what little
promo the guys did do for the album, like in
(14:36):
the University of Calgary's student newspaper, The Gauntlet, Guthrie admitted that.
NCA and its parent Universal were giving the guys mixed
messages all throughout their faded days. He'd say that was
the whole thing when we signed a record deal with
Universal years ago. They were like, we like the fact
that you guys are a band. We like the fact
that you guys play your own instruments. But then once
(14:57):
the marketing plan came together, they put us out there
and it was like, you're not marketing us.
The way you were excited about signing us, which, to
be fair, does sound incredibly frustrating, dare I say, oh,
it's kind of crazy. Soul Decision would break up soon
after Shady Satin Drug, but real can con heads, no,
that's not exactly the last we'd hear from lead singer-songwriter
(15:20):
Trevor Guthrie.
Yes, as if from out of nowhere in early 2013,
a stunning piece of trance pop hit the airwaves from
legendary Dutch DJ and producer Armand Van Buren entitled This
Is What It Feels Like, and on soaring yet pensive
vocals was the one and only Trevor Guthrie.
The song was a massive hit in Europe and received
(15:42):
a lot of support here in Canada as well, hitting
number 6 on the Canadian Hot 100 and became a
top 10 dance electronic song in the US, receiving a
Best Dance Recording nomination at the 2014 Grammy Awards to boot.
Guthrie has continued to work in the world of EDM
post Van Buren.
With the likes of Axwell and Grosso, Rehab and Alan Walker,
(16:04):
none have crossed over into the mainstream like feels like,
but he's certainly become a fixture of the scene. As
recently as this past July, Guthrie also posted a little
bit of a teaser of a soul Decision documentary for
Faded's 25th anniversary, to which I say, guys.
I found the dirty version of the track, so hit
me up if you need the link. I'm Ruby Carr.
(16:25):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Encore. Make sure
you subscribe so you never miss an episode, because when
I get you all alone, I'm going to tell you
the stories behind your favorite songs. What did you think
I was going to say? Encore is an iHeartRadio Canada podcast.
Download the free iHeartRadio app and subscribe. Thank you. Thank
(16:46):
you so much for coming.
I'm Ruby Carr and welcome to another special episode of
Encore where we take a look at some of the
iHeartRadio team's favorite Canadian songs from the past and this
week we have the story of soul Decision faded. You
know the songs just making people feel something.
Pleasure to work on this song with her, but do
you know the history? It's a struggle making any kind
of record. I don't always have the direction or concept.
(00:22):
This is Encore, an in-depth look at the stories behind
the music. Here's iHeartRadio's Ruby Carr.
Indecision. That's what I was experiencing when I had to
decide which one of Soul Decision's Canadian mega hits to
profile for this episode of Encore, that being faded or oh,
(00:42):
it's kind of crazy, of course. Indecision is also what
Soul Decision were originally called when they formed in the
early to mid-nineties as music students in North Vancouver at
Capellano College.
Fun fact, Soul Decision as Indecision actually had two non-album
radio singles that definitely received airplay even before they had
(01:05):
a sniff of a record deal, 1997's Tonight and Not Enough,
the former of which has the single cheesiest video, This
Side of Boyz II Men. Seriously, they're dressed in oversized suits,
bopping around like real cool.
Cool dudes in what appears to be kind of like
a jazz club while video vixens writhe around all sultry, uh,
(01:30):
via way too many nineties crossfades and wipes with a
G-fuk inspired beat behind the lyrics, which of course read
as the incredibly subtle, Tonight is the night we're gonna
make it right because tonight's the night we're gonna make love.
I'm sorry, it's just the best. I could not, not
(01:50):
talk about it.
Anyway, formed in Vancouver by Trevor Guthrie, David Bowman, and
Ken Luco, Indecision would sign with Universal Music and rebrand
themselves as Soul Decision, lowercase s, uppercase D in 1999
as to avoid conflict with an American band who already
had squatted on the name, uh, or maybe according to
(02:12):
the guys up to.
5 other bands.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Now I knew you
guys as Indecision. Yeah, now it's it's Soul Decision. What's
up with that? Why the name change? First of all,
that's the first question. First things first here the name change.
I'll let can't handle this one. Well, there's about 5
bands in the world that have the same name as us,
so for legal reasons we have to change it. Yeah,
but I haven't heard of the other 4. So why
did you guys have to change it? Well, because
(02:36):
Because of trademarks and stuff and it would have just
caused us a lot of hassles and uh we end
up being really happy with the sole decision actually it's
worked out really well. Basically, um, we wanted to keep
something that was close to the original name.
And we, we, we just brainstormed, I guess a bit
and we said that we like, you know, we wanted
it similar, we wanted the decision in there, we're involved
in every decision that that it's made in the band
(02:57):
and um we make our decisions based on instinct, you know,
and gut, soul, soul decision. It worked
it worked.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Styled and marketed as a boy band for their year
2000 debut album, No One Does It Better. Seriously, if
you look at some of the photos of them that
exist online, you would.
Occasionally have trouble distinguishing their look from B44. Soul Decision
were absolutely not one when it came to their sound though,
or their overall musical ethos. For starters, they were way
(03:25):
more of a kind of soulful, soft rock meets R&B
hybrid than a straight up pop group. Kind of like
if the aforementioned Boyz II Men met George Michael and
then mashed up with like a little bit of Savage Garden.
Certainly, as the band would quickly tell you, they were
not the Canadian NSYNC.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Canada's answer to NSYNC is not really.
It's not really right because we're like we're actually a band.
We actually play our own instruments, write our own stuff,
and program it all and that kind of stuff. So,
so that's how we answer that. I mean, it's flattering.
Thank you. You know, like it's cool. Like like NSYNC
is like ginormously huge and has, you know, I mean
that's cool, but in the whole aspect of, you know,
(04:07):
how we got here and how we do things, it's
pretty kind of, you know, night and day.
And I can't dance.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, as you just heard them mention too much, Soul
Decision wrote and composed the vast majority of their own
music with their debut album almost entirely composed either by
Guthrie himself or the band as a whole. So it
was actually quite a surprise.
At the time when Soul Decision made the executive decision
to fly all the way across the globe to Australia
(04:35):
to work with Savage Garden producer Charles Fisher on their
official debut album, No One Does It Better. No,
Speaker 2 (04:41):
we met Charles, and we were down in LA writing
at the time.
And uh we had kind of a list because the
album was pretty much already done and compiled. We had
produced it ourselves and we just wanted to bring somebody
in to kind of um upgrade a few things and
change a few arrangements and stuff like that around and
he was on the the kind of the shortlist of
who we'd like to work with because we like Savage
Garden and um he happened to be in LA at
(05:02):
the same time, went to Jerry's Deli, Jerry's Jerry's Deli
on Ventura Boulevard, and we sat down.
He listened to the CED and he said, Yeah, I'm in,
and that took about like 20 minutes and the next
thing we knew in about I don't know how much
longer later we were flying across the Pacific.
And doing the album, so it was great.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
The band would explain that while it was definitely a
worthwhile trip to travel to Australia to work with Charles,
they were actually providing him with a nearly finished product.
The guys had been writing and grinding since the Indecision days,
and if anything, Charles helped them scale production back.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We had all, yeah, we co-produced it with him. We actually,
the album was like pretty much 70 to 80% done.
And really just brought Charles in to kind of um
simplify some of the songs. We had a lot of
uh really kind of kind of complicated programs that overproduced.
It was overproduced really, so he just really stripped some
stuff away and we had some strings. So it was
very Charles has pretty much let us do what we wanted. Yeah,
I think there's a fear of ours too because some
producers will come in and put their sound on it
(05:57):
and you basically can go for coffee and come back
when it's done, but it will sound like a Mut
Lang record all the time. Oh.
Woo, it wasn't a jab. I love it. Shanaya, you
were wrong.
It's all good.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Woo, Matt Lang catching some strays. One final point about
Soul Decision at the time of No One Does It
Better's release, they were a bit older, no shade at all.
I'm just saying these were men in their late 20s.
They were a man band.
Despite their youthful appeal and aforementioned boy band adjacent marketing,
(06:30):
it was actually refreshing how Soul Decision kept it real
in interviews when asked about what they represented in terms
of musicality and maturity, and judging by this next answer about.
In the music industry, it feels like something that was
a bit of a hot button issue for them.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I wanted
to ask you about ageism in show business. What are
your opinions are on that, because it seems that if
you know we haven't made our mark by the age
of 30, we're kind of over the hill.
I think that's a bunch of shit. Dave, yeah, sorry,
that's right, politically correct. No, do you have any opinions
(07:09):
on it? No, I think my opinion's just been said
right there. Whatever. Isn't Ricky Martin over 30, and he
hit large when he was, yeah, like I mean, I'm
just talking about the whole trend in like 17-year-old girls
getting up there and strutting their stuff, and you know,
I think to be, oh jeez, OK, I think it's
kind of.
Disgusting. Yeah, I think it's sad in the sense that
(07:31):
people aren't viewed for what they can offer. Like they're
not valued. It's basically, you know, if you're young and
you've got these looks happening and stuff or whatever, like
you almost have more value than if someone who's, they
might be a little older, who might not be like,
you know, you know what I mean? Like it's too bad,
but I think that eventually that if you really have something,
(07:51):
some kind of talent and you really work hard, I
think that'll eventually show because, you know what, I know
what I was like at 19 and I was.
I was a, you know, a punk asshole, and I
wouldn't shade that, you know what I mean? Like I
wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now. I
don't think any of us would be able to be
doing what we're doing now if it wasn't for the
fact that we're, you know, older than that. Like that's,
you know what I mean, like just wisdom and knowledge
that you gained along there. I
Speaker 1 (08:12):
don't know. OK, so technically the first single from No
One Does It Better was the subject of this episode,
the super smash hit Faded. But if you're currently yelling
at your iHeartRadio app or other podcast app of choice, I.
Yes, no, Ruby, I know I heard the song Oh,
It's Kind of Crazy on the radio way before Faded,
(08:33):
and it's at the beginning of their music video. Uh,
you would also be correct, it's true. An original non-album
indecision version of Oh, It's Kinda Crazy was first released
in Canada as far back as 1998, but was retooled
and re-released as No One Does It Better's second single.
So for all intents and purposes, let's roll with Faded
(08:54):
being single number one.
Sorry to all the soul decision truthers out there. Faded
was released in December 1999 in Canada and May of
2000 in the US and internationally. By the time the
song hit America, it had already hit number one on
the RPM charts here in Canada, and Soul Decision had
booked an opening slot with the one and only Christina
(09:17):
Aguilera in North America. So success was expected and achieved.
Hitting the Billboard Hot 100 in July of 2000 at
number 94, it would eventually climb to a resounding number
22 on the charts and spent no less than 20
weeks on the list. Pressure that didn't seem to bother Trevor, Dave,
or Ken. Everybody's
Speaker 2 (09:37):
really happy. Do you, do you feel any kind of
pressure like, oh, all these people are giving so much
attention that, oh, you know, you have to carry it through,
you have to be the band.
That makes it for Canada.
I don't know. We really think about things like that. No,
I mean, the bottom line is that it's either good
music is good music, no matter if it comes from wherever,
from Bangladesh or Canada or wherever, and we're gonna let,
(09:59):
let our songs do the talking, you know what I mean?
So hopefully our songs are good enough that people are
gonna enjoy them, you know, I mean that's all we
can do. But do we want to kick some ass
and represent Canada? Hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's not hard to see why Faded was a success,
by the way. The song oozes charisma, it's danceable, soulful, futuristic,
and groovy in a way that always kind of teeters
on cheesiness, but I mean, it was the year 2000
after all, and it charms you all the same.
Lyrically, the song is flirtatious in all the ways you
(10:30):
might expect of, say, a Maroon 5 song, but with
a sort of carefree swag, certainly not seen in the
music of traditional boy bands. From the very first line,
Guthrie makes his intentions known. He is going to move
in nice and close, and ain't nobody going to interrupt
his game. But wait, is that what he says?
(10:51):
It took me a really long time and I almost
gave up hope, but after listening to countless re-uploads online,
I finally found the mythical, dirty version of the songtrack
that actually subs in Move in Nice and Close with
Take Off All Your Clothes, which, considering how we started
this episode, makes so much sense. I see you sole
(11:13):
decision after Dark Edition.
But that's not all, there's actually another version of Faded
that despite being what I would assume was the official
version of the track, has unfortunately been lost to the
sands of time whenever you hear the song on the
radio nowadays. Although it's usually replaced with an instrumental breakdown
these days.
Days around the 2 minute mark of the album version
(11:35):
of the track Faded includes a guest verse from Canadian
rapper Thrust, who was most notably featured on the groundbreaking
1998 hip hop single Northern Touch with the Rascals, Checkmate
Chocola and Cardinal Offill.
Thrust was also featured in the somewhat wacky music video
for Faded, what appears at first to be your kind
(11:55):
of your run of the mill cool dudes playing music
video with intercut snapshots of the guys lounging at a
swanky house party in a grungy apartment building and then
performing in an enclosed studio room. Thrust has his own
room as well. Quickly devolves to include blink and you'll
miss it inclusions of.
A lady blindfolding her partner and trapping him in a
(12:17):
standing cage while she vacuums around him, a woman laundering money,
as in hanging bills on a clothesline, guys playing indoor basketball,
a frustrated and creepy writer at a typewriter crumpling pages,
kids skipping rope, and an old lady taking sexy photos
of a randomly jacked dude.
Yeah, I don't know, man. I am tired. These Canadian
(12:39):
music videos from the late 90s, early 2000s, they are
too much. We need an entirely separate podcast to decipher
these videos.
I'm going to wildly speculate that the inclusion of Thrust's
verse was a last minute decision, especially considering on a
much music special that featured both Soul Decision and Thrust
just before the album dropped, they all confirmed they had
(13:01):
not hooked up with each other at the time of
the song's recording.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
You guys didn't
bring uh Thrust to Australia with you. Why? We did not.
you didn't download that, um, because you know what, because really,
realistically at the, at the time, uh, we really weren't
sure who.
We're gonna use, but then we saw the Rascals Northern
Touch video, and we saw, we saw this man at
(13:24):
the very end, and we went, oh, that's the guy,
that's the guy. So that video is like a staple
here at Mum. Every, every maybe second day you'll see
that video.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Soul Decision would piggyback the success of Faded with the
previously mentioned re-release of Ooh, It's Kind of Crazy, as
well as 3rd and 4th singles, No One Does It
Better and Gravity in 2000 before finishing off 2001 with
final single, Let's Do It Right.
And all of the songs achieved respectable amounts of success,
but none with the real cultural impact of Faded. At
(13:54):
the 2001 Juno Awards, Soul Decision would be nominated for
Best Album for No One Does It Better, losing to
Barreaked Ladies Maroon. Faded would be nominated for Best Single
and lose to Nelly Furtado's I'm Like a Bird, and
Soul Decision themselves would be nominated for Best Group, again,
losing to those pesky Barenaked Ladies.
(14:15):
Unfortunately, Soul Decision would never be able to top the
success they found with Faded, and no one does it better.
Despite going platinum, Soul Decision would leave major label MCA
Records by the time they released their second album, Shady
Satin Drug on their own label, but the album would
not turn out to be a success. In what little
promo the guys did do for the album, like in
(14:36):
the University of Calgary's student newspaper, The Gauntlet, Guthrie admitted that.
NCA and its parent Universal were giving the guys mixed
messages all throughout their faded days. He'd say that was
the whole thing when we signed a record deal with
Universal years ago. They were like, we like the fact
that you guys are a band. We like the fact
that you guys play your own instruments. But then once
(14:57):
the marketing plan came together, they put us out there
and it was like, you're not marketing us.
The way you were excited about signing us, which, to
be fair, does sound incredibly frustrating, dare I say, oh,
it's kind of crazy. Soul Decision would break up soon
after Shady Satin Drug, but real can con heads, no,
that's not exactly the last we'd hear from lead singer-songwriter
(15:20):
Trevor Guthrie.
Yes, as if from out of nowhere in early 2013,
a stunning piece of trance pop hit the airwaves from
legendary Dutch DJ and producer Armand Van Buren entitled This
Is What It Feels Like, and on soaring yet pensive
vocals was the one and only Trevor Guthrie.
The song was a massive hit in Europe and received
(15:42):
a lot of support here in Canada as well, hitting
number 6 on the Canadian Hot 100 and became a
top 10 dance electronic song in the US, receiving a
Best Dance Recording nomination at the 2014 Grammy Awards to boot.
Guthrie has continued to work in the world of EDM
post Van Buren.
With the likes of Axwell and Grosso, Rehab and Alan Walker,
(16:04):
none have crossed over into the mainstream like feels like,
but he's certainly become a fixture of the scene. As
recently as this past July, Guthrie also posted a little
bit of a teaser of a soul Decision documentary for
Faded's 25th anniversary, to which I say, guys.
I found the dirty version of the track, so hit
me up if you need the link. I'm Ruby Carr.
(16:25):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Encore. Make sure
you subscribe so you never miss an episode, because when
I get you all alone, I'm going to tell you
the stories behind your favorite songs. What did you think
I was going to say? Encore is an iHeartRadio Canada podcast.
Download the free iHeartRadio app and subscribe. Thank you. Thank
(16:46):
you so much for coming.
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