If I Had $1000000
| "If I Had $1000000" | ||||||||||||||
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| Single by Barenaked Ladies | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Gordon | ||||||||||||||
| Released | 1992, 1996 | |||||||||||||
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| Recorded | 1988 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||||||||||||
| Length | 4:27 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Reprise | |||||||||||||
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| Barenaked Ladies singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"If I Had $1000000" is a song by the Canadian musical group Barenaked Ladies from their album Gordon. Composed by founding members Steven Page and Ed Robertson, the sing-along track has become one of the band's best-known songs, and is a live show staple, despite never having been a true single and without an accompanying music video. In the band's iTunes Originals, Page recalls a Maroon-era interview in which bassist Jim Creeggan cited this as his favourite song of theirs, which sparked a realization in Page that the song means so much to so many people, and has become a part of people's memories of a certain time in their lives.
The song first appeared on one of the later versions of the band's first independent release, Buck Naked. The song subsequently appeared on their second and third tapes, Barenaked Lunch, and The Yellow Tape, as well as their 1991 EP Variety Recordings, and their debut CD, Gordon, which would go on to sell over a million copies in Canada, where the song remains very popular and well known. An edited version of the Gordon recording of the song later appeared as a bonus track on the UK edition of Born on a Pirate Ship (this version was later released as a single), and a live version of it was featured on Rock Spectacle. The Gordon version was then included on Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits, bringing the total album count for the song to eight.
If I Had $1000000 gained popularity over the course of the band's early tours, before the release of their first album (Gordon) and became highly requested on radio stations in Canada following the release of Gordon. This prompted the band's label to release a one-track radio single of the song in 1992. In 1993, the song would be officially released as a commercial single in the UK; a second commercial single was released there in 1996. Another radio single containing the Gordon and Rock Spectacle versions of the song was released in North America later. Despite these releases, the song is often not considered a true single, since it gained popularity before the release of a radio single, and it never had a music video (although stations such has MuchMoreMusic and MuchMoreRetro have occasionally aired a 1992 performance from Intimate and Interactive as a video).
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