How Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” Went from Afterthought to Summer Anthem

As counterintuitive as it may seem, there have been many hit songs that were last-minute additions to an album. Sometimes such songs are consciously written to be hits because a label executive “doesn’t hear a single” among the existing tracks. Len’s 1999 summertime smash, “Steal My Sunshine,” was a late entry to the track listing of their third album You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, but not because of its hit potential. It was such an afterthought for Len vocalist and songwriter Marc Constanzo that he could not find the master recording when he was looking for a song to complete the album.

The nearly forgotten song ended up being the leadoff track on You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, and it became Len’s only hit single in the U.S. and their native Canada. “Steal My Sunshine’s” path from misplaced master tape to international hit wasn’t a direct one, but once it caught on it was a presence on the Billboard charts for more than a year.

The Making of “Steal My Sunshine”

Even though “Steal My Sunshine” was one of the last pieces to complete You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, it was one of the first tracks to be written and recorded. The basis of the song is a sample from the Andrea True Connection’s 1976 disco hit “More, More, More.” Costanzo and a group of friends were eating breakfast after having been up all night at a rave in the summer of 1998. One of his friends, Brendan Canning—soon to be a co-founder of the Toronto-based band Broken Social Scene—played some disco tracks, including “More, More, More.” Costanzo was instantly smitten with the song, and he created a sample (specifically, the nine-second section beginning at 2:30) later that morning.

In the following days, Costanzo wrote the lyrics for “Steal My Sunshine” based on his experiences at the rave. He conceived of the song as having a similar flow to The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me,” with verses alternating between male and female lead vocals. The other key member of the Len collective project was his sister Sharon Costanzo, so naturally, he recruited her to record the female vocal parts. She told The Washington Post that, “Marc just dragged me out of bed and into the studio one morning and said, ‘Do you want to sing on this?’”

Once they recorded “Steal My Sunshine,” neither Costanzo sibling gave the song much thought. Marc Costanzo told Entertainment Weekly, “’Sunshine’ didn’t look like much of a song. It was recorded on eight-track. We weren’t going to put it on the record.” However, when he remembered the track and considered it as a candidate for You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, he had no idea where the tape was. He finally found it under his bed.

Go Time

Had “Steal My Sunshine” merely been a track on You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, it might not have received much more attention than if it had remained under Costanzo’s bed. Before Len released the album, they lent the track to the soundtrack compilation for the film Go. By the spring of 1999, the song began to receive airplay on alternative rock stations, which led Sony to bump Len’s album release up a few weeks from the planned mid-June rollout on its Work label. “Steal My Sunshine” was released as a single in late June, and it debuted at No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 less than two months later.

Between its late May debut on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart and its exit from the Mainstream Top 40 Recurrent chart the following July, “Steal My Sunshine” spent 14 months warming up the airwaves across the U.S. KROQ-FM in Los Angeles may have proclaimed the tune to be the “song of the summer” upon its 1999 release, but its popularity extended much l-a-t-e-r into the year (as Sharon Costanzo might say) and all the way into the summer of 2000.

The Impact of “Steal My Sunshine”

Despite its well-deserved reputation as a summer jam, “Steal My Sunshine” did not reach its peak position of No. 9 on the Hot 100 until November 1999. The song went to No. 1 in Canada and was a Top-10 hit in Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK. The single was certified Platinum in the U.S. in November 2000, while You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush was certified Gold in September 1999.

The official video for “Steal My Sunshine” cleaned up at Canada’s MuchMusic Video Awards in 1999. The clip received the honors for Best Video, Best Pop Video, and Favourite Canadian Video. The video, which was directed by Marc Costanzo and Bradley Walsh and filmed in Daytona Beach, Florida, has been viewed more than 79 million times on YouTube.

Len never returned to the charts in the U.S. or Canada, though a 2000 follow-up single “Cryptik Souls Crew” spent three weeks on the UK Official Singles Chart. Though commercial success didn’t follow, and Len soon found themselves without a label, they did release two more albums—The Diary of the Madmen (2005) and It’s Easy If You Try (2012). Even if it wasn’t a springboard to a string of hit singles, “Steal My Sunshine” still has an enviable legacy as one of the most fun and memorable songs to close out the last millennium and usher in the new one.

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Photo: Len “Steal My Sunshine” album cover