Release and Reception
"Steal My Sunshine" was included on the soundtrack to Go, released on March 30, 1999 by Sony Music Entertainment. It received heavy airplay as a result, causing Sony's subsidiary Work Records to push the album's release date from mid-June to May 25, 1999. The song became Len's most successful, reaching the Top 10 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in September 1999. It reached the top ten on the Adult Top 40, Modern Rock Tracks, Top 40 Mainstream, and Top 40 Tracks charts. At the 2000 Juno Awards, "Steal My Sunshine" was nominated for "Best Single" but lost to The Tragically Hip's "Bobcaygeon".
"Steal My Sunshine" received positive reviews from music critics. Rob Brunner of Entertainment Weekly rated it a B+, describing it as a 1990s "Don't You Want Me" with a "smiley groove and alternating male/ female vocals". For The Village Voice, Richard Riegel described the song's beat as "McCoy Tyner playing the Kraftwerk songbook, outlined in aural neon". In her review for Rolling Stone, Karen Schoemer compared Sharon Costanzo's vocals to Josie and the Pussycats. The publication listed "Steal My Sunshine" tenth on its list of the best singles of 1999. The single also garnered high praise from AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine: "Then, there's Len's 'Steal My Sunshine,' as perfect as songs get. This sun-kissed, sun-bleached blend of hip-hop, pop, disco, post-Beastie Boys cleverness and California culture is a priceless, timeless confection that instantly calls up sweltering, shimmering beaches the second the looped keyboard plays. It's a monumentally great single...put it this way, if 'Steal My Sunshine' was the last song I ever heard on this earth, I'd die happy — and it shows that mainstream pop can truly be transcendent". The song was listed third on the 1999 Pazz and Jop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau. In 2007, Stylus Magazine ranked the song thirteenth on its list of the top fifty one-hit wonders, stating that it "perfectly captured that warm, lazy feeling you get when late summer still seems like it could last forever." For a short period of time, baseball player Melky Cabrera used the song as his batting music. It is also included on the soundtrack of Major League Baseball 2K9, which was released in 2009. It's also included on the Zack and Miri soundtrack.
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Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
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“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
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