Extreme sprang forth from Boston, Massachusetts in 1985, reaching the height of their popularity in the early 1990s with their second album Pornograffitti (released 7 August 1990). It featured the global smash hit ballad More Than Words, which disguised the fact that the band primarily played a melodic and slightly funky brand of virtuoso hard rock.
Around that time, the music scene had started moving away from the late-80s safe and stylised production of hair metal, but grunge had not yet emerged as a force to be reckoned with. For a short while it looked like hard-edged funky rock was going to be the next huge thing, with bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More leading the charge. Extreme did not place the funk elements front and centre, but embraced it enough that they added the tagline “A funked-up fairy tale” on the album’s back sleeve. For a short time they became lumped in with that movement.
Short-term it did them a ton of favours. The Pornograffitti album went Top 10 in the US and mostly Top 20 in other countries globally. For a brief time, they were one of the most successful rock acts of the early 1990s, selling ten million albums. The mentioned More Than Words single did even brisker business. That song was a chart topper (or near it) in pretty much every country worldwide. It was one of the singles of the year. Obviously it became an impossible song to follow.
But, eventually something had to follow it. That thankless task went to the album closer Hole Hearted, which was released as the fourth single from the Pornograffitti album on 15 September 1991.
Certainly, Hole Hearted did very well. It reached #4 in America, #12 in UK, and stretched within the Top 30 range for most other global markets. This was a far cry from the previous single’s outstanding success, but still a performance that most bands would take in a heartbeat. It was also easily their second most popular single. They never really had another hit single that reached the levels of those two.
Like all the songs on the album, Hole Hearted was written by vocalist Gary Cherone and guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. Paul Geary (drums and percussion) and Pat Badger (bass guitar) completed the line-up, which was mostly unchanged except for later fluctuations in the drum position. After their comeback in 2007, Kevin Figueiredo has filled the drum slot.
The song’s lyrics appear to be reasonably straightforward, but are cleverly written. Cherone wrote the song from the perspective of someone who has been distracted by things in life that didn’t make him happy, describing it with a heartbreak metaphor. He has a hole in his heart, and there’s only one who can fill it.
Life ambition occupy my time
Priorities confuse the mind
Happiness one step behind
This inner peace I’ve yet to find
Rivers flow into the sea
Yet even the sea is not so full of me
If I’m not blind why can’t I see
That a circle can’t fit
Where a square should be
There’s a hole in my heart
That can only be filled by you
And this hole in my heart
Can’t be filled with the things I do
The lyrics contains a deep pledge and devotion in them that couples worldwide picked up on and enjoyed. They found a romantic meaning in this song that made it theirs, and this no doubt helped it perform well during its single run.
The song is however not about a girl, or indeed romance, but about God.
Cherone is a devout Christian, but when writing rock lyrics he does not make that obvious and is wary of taking a preaching stance in his songs. He has spoken with Christian publications where he is happy to make his beliefs more clear, and even quipped that he plagiarized some lyrics for Hole Hearted from the Bible (e.g. Ecc 1:7 – “All the streams flow into the sea yet the sea is never full”).
The song is kept general, making it universally appliable. If you want it to be about a special person in your life, it certainly works wonderfully that way – and Cherone is happy with that. “As long as you have love in your life, you’re on the right path” he said.
The guitar riff found in the opening (and repeated at various points throughout the song) is extremely catchy, and very competently performed by guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. He wrote that riff, and the music in general for the track, right after he received his first-ever 12-string guitar. The album was nearly done when the guitar he had ordered arrived, and he spontaneously started playing it immediately after opening the guitar case. The first thing that came out of it was the intro to Hole Hearted. It was written in unique circumstances, though.
In a Songfacts interview with Bettencourt, he tells the strange story of how it happened. “I don’t know if this is too much information, but I wrote it on the toilet! I got kind of excited that I had received my first 12-string, and it made me want to go to the toilet. I sat down, took my time, and dare I say, the ideas just came out. They came pouring out. But that song was written fast, and I remember coming out of the bathroom, saying, ‘I’ve got this really cool tune,’ and everybody looked at me kind of weird.”
Musical inspiration for this acoustic track came from the partially acoustic-based Led Zeppelin III, which Bettencourt had been getting into. “I was listening to Led Zeppelin III at the time a lot,” confirms Bettencourt, “and there is a lot of acoustic stuff on there. So I kind of took the groove a little bit, borrowed that feel from being inspired by the Zep III album.”
The song ends with the sound of a thunderstorm, which closes not only the song but the whole of the Pornograffitti album – similar to how Decadence Dance (the opening track) starts the song/album with the same sounds. It added a ‘full circle’ element to the listening experience.
This effect would be lost on the vinyl LP edition of the album, as Hole Hearted is sadly not included on that format. The full 13-track CD edition totals 64:21, which is a lot of music to squeeze onto a vinyl record. The question is if removing one of its most popular tracks was the obvious way to go – especially as this also removes the ‘full circle’ aspect of the thunderstorm (the album ending the way it begins).
As a popular hit, the band made a video clip of the song. This was shot outside the Boston Centre for the Arts at 551 Tremont Street in Boston (street number seen on many of the panning shots around the band). The video shows the band cavorting in the streets, having a grand old time in contrast to the heartbreaking lyric. The clip was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the husband-and-wife team that also did the More Than Words video. Both videos used a black-and-white sepia look.
Another thing the two big hits have in common, is that their styles are different from the majority of the album they’re on. The fact that many listeners only knew the band from these songs, which were both largely acoustic melodic ballads, mislead more than a few music fans who didn’t realize that a lot of their music is energetic hard rock. This resulted in some surprises when folks came to their concerts expecting an evening of easy-going acoustic tunes.
A few years later, the band created a horn mix version of the song. It would be used as a b-side for the Tragic Comic single (from their next album III Sides To Every Story in 1993). It works surprisingly well, the horns adding a lot of ‘oomph’ to the song alongside some hard-hitting drum tracks and funky guitar/bass parts.
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