Cats In The Cradle

Although best known as a heavy metal band, Ugly Kid Joe scored their biggest chart hit with a faithful cover of the Harry Chapin classic "Cat's In The Cradle" off their full-length debut, America's Least Wanted. In the 2015 book Survival of the Fittest: Heavy Metal in the 1990s, the band's lead singer, Whitfield Crane, explained why they covered it. "We didn't have enough songs to fill the record, and Mercury/Polygram was so driven to release something," he said. "We sat there and told the label, 'Yeah, yeah. We have the songs - no worries.' And we really didn't have enough songs to fill a proper LP. I was like, 'Why don't we put 'Cat's in the Cradle' on this record?' Just as a filler, really. We did that, and everything was moving real quick. There was a radio station in Texas that started playing it – it went #1 immediately. And then we made a video with Matt Mahurin, and we got the Ozzy/Moto?rhead tour. We got to travel around the world - I never thought I'd leave California."

Ugly Kid Joe landed a hit with their first single, "Everything About You," in 1991. They cultivated a reputation for goofy fun, so it was surprising when they released the very sincere "Cat's In The Cradle." "I love that song – I love it to this day," Whitfield Crane said in Survival of the Fittest. "So no double-edge sword. It was great. It showed a different dynamic of the band, because we came off this massive cheeky song, 'Everything About You,' and then we had some depth with 'Cats,' and we kept our humor with 'Neighbor.' What's funny enough is we went out on tour for the last two years all around the world, and you go and talk to people, and that song really affected people the same way Harry Chapin's original version affected me."

Ugly Kid Joe removed the apostrophe from the title, making their version "Cats In The Cradle," not "Cat's In The Cradle." This means, interpreted literally, there is more than one cat in their cradle.