Barenaked Ladies

Barenaked Ladies began as a joke that went too far, as founders Ed Robertson and Steven Page found themselves on stage during a high school battle of the bands in 1988 playing whatever songs they could think of. The joke continued, becoming a quartet with the addition of brothers Andy and Jim Creeggan and playing in venues throughout the Toronto area. They started to gain more notoriety in Canada, adding a fifth member in Tyler Stewart and releasing their first commercial release: The Yellow Tape, which wound up becoming the first independent release to reach platinum status in Canada. With that, the Barenaked Ladies finally signed to a label and released their first full-length album called Gordon in 1992. A success in Canada, the band tried to make it big in America, but failed to do so until their fourth album Stunt launched with the megahit single "One Week" in 1998. The record sold more than 5 million copies and the single earned them a Grammy nomination. Their next album, 2000's Maroon, featured another hit single in "Pinch Me," but didn't reach the highs of their previous release. Barenaked Ladies were prolific in the 2000s, releasing five albums in five years from 2003 to 2007 while also reaching out to other areas, such as creating and performing the theme song for "The Big Bang Theory" (CBS 2007- ). However, by 2008, the co-founders were in a rocky place, with Page dealing with a cocaine addiction and Robertson crashing his single-engine plane. Page left the band a few months later, and for the first time since the early '90s, the band was a quartet again. While Barenaked Ladies slowed their pace after 20 years of performing, they still released several new albums over the next few years, including 2010's All in Good Time, 2013's Grinning Streak, and 2015's Silverball.