Barenaked Ladies is a phrase that might have caused Beavis & Butthead to snigger loudly three decades ago.
But the sexual innuendo embedded in that name has long dissipated simply because the whimsical Canadian band behind the name has become a musical institution with a series of delightfully catchy tunes such as “It’s All Been Done,” “If I Had a Million Dollars” and the unlikely 1998 No. 1 hit “One Week.”
“We’ve turned the phrase into a whole new thing,” said Tyler Stewart, the band’s drummer since the early 1990s. “You now think of Barenaked Ladies as a band, not nude women.”
Their songs generally don’t delve into sex at all. “The most sexual song we have is one called ‘Conventioneers’ where two people hook up at a conference,” he said.
Even then, the lyrics for the 2000 deep cut are more humorous than passionate e.g.: “I followed your perfume out, away from all the rabble/Right up to your room for a drink and Travel Scrabble.”
And the band a year later recorded “It’s Only Me (Wizard of Magic Land).”
“It’s about self love,” Stewart said. “If our music leads people to getting it on, more power to them!”
So Barry White? Eat your heart out.
BNL, as the group is often dubbed, will be seducing thousands of Atlantans at Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park June 30 with ticket prices ranging from $31.50 to $81.50 at livenation.com.
It’s no shock, given the band’s dork appeal, that its most heard song is not one of its radio hits but “The History of Everything,” the theme song to “The Big Bang Theory,” a monster CBS sitcom which aired from 2007 to 2019 that embraced nerd culture to the nth degree. While theme songs in the 1970s and 1980s could last up to 90 seconds, by the late 2000s, broadcast TV theme songs had shrunken to squeeze in more ads. BNL’s TV version takes just 20 seconds.
Fortunately, the band is known for squeezing a bevy of words into a short amount of time (see “One Week”). But BNL did record a 90-second version with an extra verse and a solo section that will be played at Cadence. (The band also performed the song on the set of “The Big Bang Theory.”)
Stewart takes pride in the fact the band has been super stable over the years save for the seemingly abrupt departure of founding member and co-lead singer Steven Page 14 years ago. Since then, BNL has released multiple albums and passed Page’s vocal duties to other bandmates including Stewart.
“I can’t believe that much time has passed, but we have truly moved on as a band,” Stewart said. “We’re all more involved. We’re more into it now. That era with the original five seems like a long time ago.”
His take on the band’s longevity is “mutual respect and admiration. Everyone gets to do their thing. Everyone gets to write songs and record those songs. We communicate. It’s like I’m married to these three other guys. We don’t let resentments and grudges build up. You have to lay it all out on the table.”
Stewart watched with fascination all eight hours of Apple TV+’s documentary “Get Back” about the Beatles’ creating that legendary album.
“What it made me realize is all bands are the same,” Stewart mused. “They just worked their [expletives] off. They came to work every day and just worked at those songs. I wish we got to see how every Beatles album was made.”
Would “Get Back” inspire BNL to do a comparable documentary?
“Yes and no,” Stewart said. “Yes if it was just for the grandkids to see it. No because everybody doesn’t need to see that kind of stuff. But if we were as exciting as the Beatles, maybe we could also wait 50 years before it came out!”
IF YOU GO
Barenaked Ladies with Five for Fighting
7 p.m. Friday, June 30. $31.50-$81.50. Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, 4469 Stella Drive NW, Atlanta, livenation.com.
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