"Flowers on The Wall" is a song made famous by 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.
Contents[]
Chart positions[edit][]
| Chart (1965) | Peak
position |
|---|---|
| New Zealand Singles Chart | 2 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks | 2 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 4 |
| U.K. Singles Chart | 38 |
Eric Heatherly version[edit][]
| "Flowers on the Wall" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Eric Heatherly | ||||
| from the album Swimming in Champagne | ||||
| B-side | "Someone Else's Cadillac" | |||
| Released | 2000 | |||
| Format | CD single | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 3:29 | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Producer(s) | Keith Stegall | |||
| Eric Heatherly singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
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[edit][]
| Chart (2000) | Peak
position |
|---|---|
| Canada Country Tracks (RPM)[1] | 3 |
| US BillboardHot 100[2] | 50 |
| US Hot Country Songs (Billboard)[3] | 6 |
Year-end charts[edit][]
| Chart (2000) | Position |
|---|---|
| US Country Songs (Billboard)[4] | 30 |
In popular culture[edit][]
The song is used in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction.[5] Bruce Willis's character sings along to the line, "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo." 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 that 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.
This song also featured as the theme song to A Dog's Show (1977 to 1992), a New Zealand television series featuring sheepdog trials.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quotes the whole 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.