Since the band’s their split in December of 1997 fans have been sending letters and e-mails urging the band to reunite and asking why they broke up in the first place. Truth be told, their decision to disband came as a surprise to just about everyone. Twelve months earlier, the Seattle-based trio had released II, the follow-up to their wildly successful 1995 self-titled Columbia Records debut. Recorded for $8,000 and initially released on indie label PopLlama, The Presidents of the United States of America went double platinum, rocketed all the way to #6 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, produced three Top 40 hits (“Lump,” “Kitty” and “Peaches”) and a #1 single on Billboard’s Modern Rock Chart, and garnered two Grammy nominations and a gaggle of critical praise for its sense of pop savvy and quirkiness. Their videos blanketed MTV, they toured the planet, played a live MTV concert at Mount Rushmore, and appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Howard Stern Show and Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve. As if that weren’t enough, II spawned another top-ten Modern Rock hit, “Mach 5,” and the band contributed a rocking cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star” to the platinum-selling soundtrack to Adam Sandler’s The Wedding Singer. At the end of the line, Pure Frosting, the band’s swan song for Columbia, included a cover of the Ian Hunter song “Cleveland Rocks,” which was used for many seasons as the theme song to the Emmy-nominated television series, The Drew Carey Show. For the average artist, such achievements usually mark the summation of a long and healthy career—if they’re lucky. The Presidents, however, accomplished all that and more in just a couple of years.

• Rock
• Indie
• 90's