“Meet Virginia,” the 1998 single that introduced the world to San Francisco adult-contemporary alternative band Train, is a breezy slice of Sugar Ray-ish Cali antigrunge. Between that breeziness and the band’s affably scruffy everybro image, Train seemed destined to be a one-hit wonder, a destiny I assumed was sealed when lightly used copies of Train started flooding into the record store where I worked at the time.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, though, Train managed to get a foothold in the new millennium, scoring a hit with the inescapable 2001 power ballad “Drops of Jupiter.” Since then they’ve managed to maintain a steady presence on the Billboard charts, thanks in large part to the fact that the older mainstream-rock listeners that make up their fan base are one of the few remaining demographics that reliably buys music on physical formats. Train’s 2009 album Save Me, San Francisco, featuring the ukulele-driven “Hey Soul Sister,” went quintuple platinum.