Flowers on the Wall

"Flowers on The Wall" is a song made famous by the country music group The Statler Brothers. Written and composed by the group's original tenor, Lew DeWitt, the song peaked in popularity in January 1966, spending four weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles chart, and reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was used in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction and as the title theme of the 2001-2002 BBC Radio 4 sitcom Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting.

The song won the 1966 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary (R&R) Performance - Group (Vocal or Instrumental).

The Statler Brothers re-recorded the song in 1975 for their first greatest hits album for Mercury Records, The Best of The Statler Brothers. The song is also featured on Nancy Sinatra's album Boots (1967).

Chart positions

Eric Heatherly version

Eric Heatherly recorded the song in 2000 on his debut album, Swimming In Champagne. Also released as his debut single, Heatherly's rendition reached No. 6 on the Hot Country Songs charts and No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Chart positions

Year-end charts

In popular culture

• The song (its 1975 version) is used in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction.^[5] In the film, Bruce Willis's character sings along to the line, "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo" as he is driving. In the 1995 film Die Hard with a Vengeance, when Willis's character John McClane is describing his suspension from the police force, he says he was "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo."
• The song was frequently employed as bumper music on the syndicated radio talk show Coast to Coast AM, particularly in the earlier days when Art Bell was the host.
• In a publicly released video, Dylan Klebold, one of the two teens who committed the Columbine High School Massacre, was filmed by a friend while driving in his car at some point prior to the shooting. They were both listening to "Flowers on the Wall" playing on the radio, singing along to the song and mocking it.
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quotes the song's complete lyrics in his 1981 book Palm Sunday calling the song "yet another great contemporary poem by the Statler Brothers" and using it to describe "the present condition" of an American man who had recently departed his family. "It is not a poem of escape or rebirth. It is a poem about the end of a man's usefulness," he adds.
• The Muppets have YouTube viral video parodying the song in which has a band of rats, The Ratler Brothers, sing the song while Beaker struggles with insomnia after being the subject of an experiment involved consuming a large amount of coffee. Considering the considerable children's interest in the franchise, the line in the chorus "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo " is changed to other pointless activities.
• Nancy Sinatra covered the song for her album Boots

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Whitburn, Joel, Top Country Songs: 1944-2005 (2006)