Jeff Buckley has landed his first hit on the Billboard Top 100 singles charts 29 years after his death.
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over was released on the late singer/songwriter's debut album Grace in 1994, but was never released as a single. Grace peaked at number 149 on the Billboard 200 album chart upon its release, but gradually became acclaimed as a masterpiece and, in 2016, was finally certified platinum in the US for one million sales.
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over has been gaining traction on social media, and specifically TikTok, since the release in August last year of It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley, a documentary from film-maker Amy Berg, whose previous credits include 2006's Deliver Us From Evil, an expose of child sexual abuse in the Catholic church in California, and West Memphis Three documentary West of Memphis (2012).
"You know, I did not set out to be a filmmaker," Berg told the International Documentary Association. "I love making films, but even after Deliver Us From Evil, I was unsure about continuing. But the dream of making a film on Jeff Buckley kept me going for all these years.
"I found his mother at some point and then they asked me to make a biopic on him. But the wealth of the archive convinced me that it would make a much stronger documentary. In the last 15 years, whenever I finished a film, I reached out to check if she was ready yet. In 2019 she finally agreed."
Last year, Grace producer Andy Wallace spoke with YouTube personality Rick Beato about his work on the record, and agreed with Beato's description of the late Californian singer-songwriter as "a genius".
"Right from the very beginning there was a kind of kindred soul feeling," Wallace said about his first meeting with Buckley. "We had a lot of similar mindsets about music in general. It felt good, and I know he liked it too."
Wallace also recalled that his first experience of watching Buckley play live was "jaw-dropping".
"I was just spellbound by Grace," he said. "I looked at his manager and said, Did he write that? Is that one of his? And he said, 'Yeah'. [I thought] Oh boy, I can't wait to get into the studio on that one!"... The record was so magical in my estimation."
Arguably the best-known song on Grace is Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah, which reached number 2 in the UK.
