Follow Me (Uncle Kracker)
Kid Rock's turntablist stepped out solo with a breezy acoustic sleeper that hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and owned the radio in summer 2001. Under the sunny singalong hook lurked something darker—Uncle Kracker himself called it "a dirty picture painted with a pretty brush." It went to No. 1 in eight countries and never really left American radio.
Uncle Kracker is Matthew Shafer, born in 1974 in Mount Clemens, Michigan. His brother's chance turntable competition against a then-unknown Kid Rock sparked an unlikely friendship. By 1994, Kid Rock had recruited Shafer as the turntablist for his Twisted Brown Trucker band—a remarkable vote of confidence given that Shafer had no DJ experience whatsoever. The bet paid off. When Shafer finally released his solo debut, Double Wide, in 2000 (produced mostly by Kid Rock with Michael Bradford), it hit No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum by the end of 2001.
"Follow Me" was released as a single on November 6, 2000, co-written by Shafer and Michael Bradford. It was the breezy acoustic sleeper that somehow crossed over massive: No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2001, No. 7 on Adult Contemporary, and No. 1 in eight countries, including Australia, Germany, and Ireland. The song had a secret. Underneath the bright, singalong chorus were darker lyrics about betrayal or cheating that almost nobody noticed on first listen. Shafer told MTV News in 2001 that the track "takes on a couple of different meanings"—a "dirty picture painted with a pretty brush," as he put it.
Shafer stayed on the radio for years after: his 2002 remake of "Drift Away" with Dobie Gray went on to spend a record 28 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Adult Contemporary chart. But "Follow Me" is the one stitched into summer 2001—the song that made America sing along to something it didn't quite understand.
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