Beyond The Guess Who: Len- "Feelin' Alright"

Canadian One Hit Wonders try to followup the ultimate 90s Summer anthem.

Welcome to Beyond The Guess Who. Each edition I cover a lesser-known Canadian musical artist. This week: Len’s attempts at following up “Steal My Sunshine”.

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I was going through my Bluesky feed recently when someone I follow brought up “Feelin’ Alright”, Len’s follow-up to their 1999 hit “Steal My Sunshine”. Not long after, mention of it popped up again on here, and it hit me that there might be a new instalment of Beyond The Guess Who in the making.

You couldn’t go anywhere in the Summer of 1999 without hearing Len’s lone hit “Steal My Sunshine”. I heard it on the radio, at the listening station, on TV (Much More Music had the video in regular rotation), and even on the radio in the first aid tent when I wound up with hypothermia at a Scout camp—I knew scouting wasn’t for me when the best part was winding up in the first aid tent.

I remember reading a piece in a magazine calling it the “Don’t You Want Me” for the late 1990s, comparing Len to the Human League. I honestly don’t recall what publication that was, and I find it a bit of a bold comparison. Both songs do feature a female vocalist in the middle, but “Don’t You Want Me” is a much superior song.

After Summer faded into Fall and “Steal My Sunshine” started to lose it’s vogue for Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5”, it was follow-up time. I remember tuning into YTV’s Hitlist (or as I regularly call it on here, the S***list) and seeing Len’s new video. I hit record, was enthralled by what I heard and played it over and over and over again. Surely this was going to be another massive hit for Len!

I was wrong.

It’s a shame because this track is an absolute banger. I believe that if they’d waited about three years to release this, it might have been huge. It’s not far off from what bands like The Darkness were doing. And it might have blended in well with the whole pop-punk thing that was big at the time. There’s a metal-style guitar solo in the middle, the chorus is anthemic, and the song flat-out rocks. It’s different from their big hit, but there are enough similarities that you know this is the “Sunshine” group. Siblings Marc and Sharon Costanzo once again trade vocal harmonies. The song is going for “teen pop hit”, its subject matter being how much school sucks.

Trigger Warning: This video features disgraced actor Danny Masterson. I posted an audio version below for anyone who doesn’t want to see it for that reason.

Most teen pop fans were probably listening to Britney, boy bands, or rap metal. It was a dark time for popular music. Anything that didn’t fit that neat little box usually died a quick death.

That aside, who was Len, and why did they seem unfairly destined for the one-hit wonder file?

Len was formed in 1991 by Marc Costanzo and his older sister Sharon. Their name came from a high school friend of Marc’s named Lenny. Between 1992-1997, Len released a series of independent albums. At one point around 1998, Marc was briefly in Sum 41 when the band didn’t have a guitarist.

Before “Steal My Sunshine”, Len was likely best known for “Candy Pop”. I remember my brother showing me the video for it right after “Sunshine” broke out. Research tells me it was used as the theme of the Canadian teen consumer program Street Cents for a while. I did watch that show as a kid, but don’t have a recollection of “Candy Pop” being the theme. Granted, I also didn’t realize Street Cents aired until 2006.

Summer 1999 rolled around and seemingly out of nowhere, Len scored a huge hit. I remember hearing You Can’t Stop The Bum Rush on a listening station after returning home from Scout Hell Camp. I didn’t like it enough to buy it at the time, despite going crazy for the first two singles. I do remember having an ad for the album I’d ripped out of Exclaim! tacked on to my bedroom wall, though. (I did later buy a copy for $2 a couple of months after writing this)

One thing that sticks out many years later, though, is their Kraftwerk pastiche “The Hard Disk Approach”

Reviews for the album seem to have been split down the middle. Substack’s own Robert Christgau appears to have hated the album, but Christgau (sometimes to my amusement) hates a lot of things*.

Because Len, stylistically, was all over the map, this probably hurt their chances, which is unfortunate. I would imagine formatted radio didn’t know what to do with a band that went from pop to hard rock to hip-hop on each single. It irks me that artists are expected to pick a specific style and stay with it.

One more single, “Cryptik Souls Crew”, did become a minor Canadian hit and also pierced the UK Top 40, but that was their penultimate attempt at a hit.

There was one more stab at a hit towards the end of 2000. A Digimon movie came out, soundtracks were a huge deal back then, and Len’s cover of “Kids In America” was chosen as the song to promote it. I remember YTV showing the cool cartoon video for this. The single unfortunately bombed, I forgot about Len, and not long after, mediocre Adrian Gurvitz-assembled girl group No Secrets had a minor hit with their Godawful cover of “Kids In America” instead.

Honestly, YTV probably just tried to push this because it fell under CanCon and was from a Digimon movie.

A follow-up album titled We Be Who We Be was slated for release in 2002, preceded by the single “Bobby”. The album was shelved and finally released three years later as The Diary Of The Madmen. Also on the album was a pretty cool cover of New Edition’s “Cool It Now”

Most recently, Len released another album in 2012. They’re listed as still active online, though I don’t know how updated any of that info is. Marc is also said to work for EMI in a creative capacity, but again, I don’t know when the last time any of that was updated. I’m sure they’re feelin’ alright wherever they are.

*If you want to read a wonderfully unfiltered batch of music reviews, I highly recommend Christgau’s 1970’s Consumer Guide. I happened on a used copy over 20 years ago, and it’s a keeper. I don’t always agree with him, but it’s a highly entertaining read nonetheless.

Next Week: TBA