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Dec 11, 2024 Issue #72 - The ‘90s Issue with The Cardigans and Thurston Moore By Matt Conner

“It’s weird because if there are 20 songs from the ’90s that still get played at The Home Depot, ‘Closing Time’ is definitely one of those. It’s like, ‘How did that happen?’”

That question is an honest one for Dan Wilson, the longtime frontman and principal songwriter for Semisonic. A decade known for its musical abundance—as rock went authentic and hip-hop went mainstream amid several other blooming genres—also created enough room for a power pop trio from the Twin Cities to make its mark as well.

Those in the region were already well aware of Semisonic before the rest of us. After seven years touring the Midwest and beyond with alt-rock outfit Trip Shakespeare, Wilson and John Munson linked arms with drummer Jacob Slichter to form a new outlet—at first titled Pleasure. The goal was to keep making music, albeit one with a different melodic bent.

Wilson wrote a handful of songs so the band could offer both covers or original tunes at live shows, including early singles “Down in Flames” and “F.N.T.” Wilson says he sent an early demo to a friend in the music industry in Los Angeles to hear her trusted opinion. “She emailed me back and said, ‘These sound great. Wanna start a bidding war?’” he remembers.

“I think I said, ‘Hmm, maybe, maybe not.’ I don’t think I had an opinion about it. But it did make me realize that here’s someone whose opinion I respected essentially telling me people were going to love this. So that felt cool in and of itself.”

Even at the height of the band’s popularity, Wilson said he felt like a man out of place or time.

“Even in the ’90s, I thought about where the band fit in. I might have been believing the hype about what all of the other artists were like as people,” he says.

“When I looked around the landscape of the music I liked in the ’90s and the music I was playing, I felt like I just didn’t fit. I had no interest in doing heroin. I’d always smoked weed as a teenager but never found it to be an important part of my life. I didn’t have the kind of epic adventures in misadventures that it seemed all these other singers would have. I was the most bookish of the people I’d admired.”

While Semisonic went on to have other hits, including “Singing in My Sleep” and “Secret Smile” and even released their first album in 22 years (Little Bit of Sun) in 2023, it was “Closing Time” (from their 1998 album, Feeling Strangely Fine) that catapulted Wilson and company to this new stratosphere of popularity—one that felt out of touch with the band’s grounded Midwestern sensibilities.

“I felt like I’d pulled a fast one and got into the party through the kitchen, you know?” admits Wilson. “I don’t feel sorry for myself in that regard at all. We were a very energetic live band and we worked as hard as we could to be as great of a trio as we could be. That was a lot of fun in itself, to be able to rouse up a huge sound with three people. But culturally, I never felt like it fit. I’m not very oppositional. I’m not Thom Yorke, casting aside all of the pretentious capitalistic bullshit. I just never felt like I was a very exemplary member of that type of world.”

As for the song’s staying power even today, Wilson has no idea what the secret sauce is made of—and he’s someone who should know. Wilson himself is one of the most respected songwriters in the industry today, having won two Grammy Awards and worked with everyone from Adele and John Legend to Chris Stapleton and Celine Dion. But when describing “Closing Time,” he simply shrugs at the lack of an answer.

“The song still gets played on the actual radio. It’s insane. And people talk about it like it’s one of those things that everybody knows. ‘Closing Time’ is the song that never fell off the radar. I have no idea how that happened, but that’s what happened.”

[Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 72 of our print magazine, The ’90s Issue, which can be bought directly from us here. This is the article’s debut online.]

www.semisonic.com

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