It might be the best a tambourine has ever sounded on a song…it just sparkles.

“Fade Into You,” Mazzy Star’s mid-90’s MTV classic is the rare one hit wonder that transcends time and place. The song is such a warm blanket of sound that it was featured on countless mix tapes in the 90’s, then placed prominently on every mix CD made by a sensitive guy in the early 2000’s, and still lives on an immeasurable number of streaming playlists.

(T)his song exists kind of out of time. It could have come out a couple years ago, or it could have come out in the 70s or the 90s.

In the latest episode of One Hit History, Sloane Spencer sits down with musician M. Lockwood Porter to discuss a song that arose from the tail end of the Los Angeles music scene known as the Paisley Underground. Mazzy Star is fronted by the tantalizing wallflower Hope Sandoval and though the song was everywhere in 1994, neither Spencer nor Porter became familiar with the hit until years later. Porter shares details about his forthcoming fifth LP, which includes contributions from John Moreland.

One of the things that makes this band so tantalizing is that my understanding is that Hope Sandoval is very shy and has stage fright…it just adds some mystery and depth to what you hear in the music.

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Thanks to Charles Hale for this episode’s show notes. You can find his radio show at Ajax Diner Book Club and in an upcoming One Hit History podcast!

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