Songfacts®:

• In this late '90s earworm that combines alt rock with flamenco pop, Sugar Ray singer Mark McGrath is caught in a problematic relationship where he's tempted to cheat on his girlfriend. Originally titled "The Cowboy Song," it was a group songwriting effort but really took off when drummer Stan Frazier was suddenly hit with inspiration.
  
  "Sometimes I'll be riding my bike or eating a piece of pizza, and I'll hear a melody and try to think of a lyric. Like with 'Every Morning,'" Frazier told Modern Drummer in 2005.
  
  "'Every morning there's a halo hanging from?' That whole thing came into my head in five seconds. I was leaving the studio one day and on my way to the parking lot and the lyrics and the melody came right into my head. I went back in, and our engineer, Steve Gallagher, was putting the mics back in the boxes, and I said, 'Steve, throw everything back up. I've got something for 'The Cowboy Song'" - then I put it down and everyone heard it the next day and they were like, 'Oh my God, that's going to be huge.'"
• When McGrath heard Frazier's verse he was impressed - and horrified. The singer told Chris DeMakes A Podcast in 2021, "I go, 'Are you out of your f---ing mind? That's not a verse, that's the chorus!" From there, McGrath brainstormed the ensuing verse, "Couldn't understand, how to work it out." He continued, "Those words, that melody, came to me first. I didn't even have to think about it."
• Anyone who listened to the radio at all in 1999 probably has the opening lyrics to this song living rent-free in their head, which is probably why so many people have claimed to figure out the meaning. McGrath sings:
  
  Every morning there's a halo hangin' from the corner
  Of my girlfriend's four-post bed
  I know it's not mine but I'll see if I can use it
  For the weekend or a one-night stand.
  
  Instead of reciprocating his angelic girlfriend's loyalty, he contemplates exploiting it, thinking he can get away with cheating because she trusts him. Unless you believe the alternate interpretation, which casts the girlfriend as a serial cheater who blatantly hangs a halo (i.e. a used condom or sex toy) on the corner of her bed every morning. McGrath inadvertently lent credence to the sleazier analysis by jokingly confirming it on social media but insists it's not really true.
  
  "I made my statement about it, it's absolutely not about pegging. It's not about a used condom," he told Screen Rant in 2022. "Get your minds out of the gutter. It's just a little innocent song about the innocence of your partner and temptation. That's what the song is about. But no one wants to hear it from me. And even when I tried to correct it, they're like, 'Nope. We know what it really is. We're staying with the truth.'"
• Sugar Ray had their breakthrough hit with "Fly," a 1997 pop song that was an anomaly on the otherwise nu metal-leaning album Floored. The success of the uncharacteristic single made critics dubious about the band's chances of survival beyond their 15 minutes of fame. Sugar Ray responded with the cheekily titled follow-up album, 14:59, and proved they weren't one-hit-wonders when "Every Morning" reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 (#1 Modern Rock).
• The band knew a lot was riding on the success of the album, but they weren't above trolling their listeners by using a death-metal song for the opener.
  
  "Back then, places like Tower Records had listening stations where you could preview the album before you bought it," McGrath told Rock Cellar Magazine in 2015. "I'm still in like super-prankster mode, going 'wouldn't it be funny if the first song on our song was a death-metal song?' so the first song you heard on 14:59 was 'New Direction,' a joke at our expense AND possibly our pocketbook."
  
  Fortunately, most listeners stuck it out long enough for this tune to reach their ears, but the prank could have backfired. He continued: "That was pretty risky back then because people literally went to those listening stations and if they didn't like the first song they wouldn't buy the record. But it was only 45 seconds and went right into 'Every Morning.'"
• 14:59 producer David Kahne, who also produced Floored, encouraged the band to change their sound to match the breezy vibe of their first hit, but McGrath was doubtful. The singer told Rolling Stone in 1999: "He said, 'Let's build songs around your voice,' and I said, 'That's insane. We're here to sell records.'"
• The chord progression was inspired by "Sweet Jane" by the Velvet Underground. Sugar Ray's longtime pal McG, who also directed the music video for "Every Morning," suggested the band write something in a similar vein to the 1970 rock song, so guitarist Rodney Sheppard changed the key to suit McGrath's voice and came up with the chord progression.
• This interpolates the smooth "Laaaa-ah-ah" refrain from "Suavecito" (1971) by the Chicano-rock band Malo. Sugar Ray initially used the part as a placeholder with every intention of replacing it with something else, but it fit the vibe of the song perfectly so they kept it.
  
  McGrath told MTV: "We referenced 'Suavecito' because growing up in California, you know, that was just like the low rider anthem. Any car show or swap meet you'd ever go by, you'd always hear that song and that just stuck in your mind."
  
  As a result, Malo members Richard Bean, Abel Zarate, Pablo Tellez were given songwriting credit.
• This also samples the hook from Hugh Masekela's 1968 jazz instrumental "Grazing In The Grass."
• In the McG-directed music video, Sugar Ray performs the tune at a roller-skating rink for an assortment of bikers, punks, and school girls. The clip pays tribute to the 1976 baseball classic The Bad News Bears, particularly the motorcycle rebel Kelly Leak who helps lead the team of youthful misfits to victory. McGrath, sporting a mullet, channels the character as he rolls onto the scene and takes command of a pinball machine from a pair of Little Leaguers.
  
  The setting is a nod to the band's childhood in Southern California, where skating rinks were plentiful. "It was in our DNA," McGrath told Chris DeMakes A Podcast. "So I think we were pulling on things that meant a lot to us from that era."
• Fans of Chris DeMakes' band Less Than Jake claim that Sugar Ray ripped off the music video's concept from the ska-punkers' clip for "Dopeman," which is also set in a skating rink. DeMakes was skeptical because Sugar Ray was already a huge band while his own group was just starting out, but he asked McGrath about the claim during their podcast interview. The singer said he'd never seen the 1997 video, which was banned from MTV for its drug references, but he would have gladly copied them if he did.
  
  "I would have been proud to have stolen an idea from Less Than Jake," he said. "It would have made the video a lot cooler."
• This was used in these TV shows:
  
  Cruel Summer ("Welcome To Chatham" - 2023)
  Fresh Off The Boat ("No Apology Necessary" - 2019)
  Family Guy ("The Dating Game" - 2017)
• Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams, who play therapists Paul and Gaby on the Apple TV+ series Shrinking, sing along to this during a car ride in the 2023 episode "Potatoes." Williams told Entertainment Weekly she made a list of favorite songs from her middle school years, and Ford got to decide which one they would sing. He picked "Every Morning" - to the delight of Mark McGrath.
  
  "That one, when it was sent to me, my jaw fell on the floor because you license a song, you don't know how they're going to use it. Rarely does someone sing it a cappella along to the track. Rarely. And rarely is that person Han Solo," he told Stereogum. "I mean, the fact that he also picked it by himself, that was a 'pinch me' moment. I get goosebumps thinking about it."