When they were finding their feet as a band in the industrial town of Fagersta, Sweden, The Hives would look to New Jersey garage punks Electric Frankenstein for clues to unlock the vast potential bubbling away in their rehearsal space.
“We could never figure out what they did – every part either twice or four times as long as you’re supposed to do,” guitarist Nicholaus Arson told Vice. “It was kind of a joke, like, to see how long you could play the riff before you felt like you needed to go to another part. You have a riff, you play it for 10 seconds, and then people expect you to switch to a different riff. But if you keep going for a minute, people go bananas for that.”
The band already had an arsenal of catchy riffs in their locker, but there was something about their single Hate to Say I Told You So that made people go absolutely bananas.
When the band first went into the studio to record their second album, 2000’s Veni Vidi Vicious, producer Pelle Gunnerfeldt said an early version of the song sounded like “a Swedish ZZ Top or something”, according to vocalist Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist.
“He didn’t like the song,” the singer told The Guardian. “He thought it was boring trite rock, so he made all these sonic changes like adding the swooshing effects, which were all the way through the song at one point. I got him to remix some songs with me and we changed the arrangement. Having less of the swooshy, fast guitar made the end more intense.”
Veni Vidi Vicious was released in April through Burning Heart (the one-time home of fellow countrymen Refused), with Hate to Say I Told You So following as a single in November.
“It’s pretty easy to get, it’s total spinal rock,” Almqvist later told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s nothing intellectual about it. It hits your reptile brain. Plus, it’s fairly monotonous, and I think people need that on the radio.”
Following the closure of Creation Records, Alan McGee launched Poptones at the turn of the millennium, just as the garage rock revival was picking up steam. After watching the video for Hate to Say I Told You So on German TV, he quickly signed the band to his label and repackaged the Fagersta five's first two albums (including their 1997 debut Barely Legal) and an EP as a compilation album titled Your New Favourite Band, which peaked at number seven in the UK albums chart.
"The title was ballsy and funny because we didn’t actually have any hits, but maybe if you say something enough people start believing it," remembers Almqvist.
Following the single's re-release in February 2002, the band's profile in the UK gathered pace, helped along by an exhilarating appearance on Top of the Pops later that month.
"We were an underground punk-rock band; a hit in our world was 500 people having our record and 400 of them we didn’t know," Almqvist told Louder. "We expected it to do that but not to be so massive.
"When we put it out, contemporary music made no sense to us, it was only a year or two later when The Strokes and The White Stripes got popular that it seemed like we had a place in the popular world," he added. "Becoming famous overnight was like old-school Frank Sinatra, New York New York — it was awesome! You go on television and everyone sees you.”
The band was later caught in a major label bidding war, and went on to sign a deal with Universal Music, worth a reported $10 million and praise from boss Jimmy Iovine.
"They created a buzz on their own," Iovine told Spin once the ink had dried. “I respect that. I will pay for that. I will let them drive.”
The song is their most popular song on Spotify, with over 303 million streams, and remains an integral part of their set 26 years on. Not bad for a “fairly monotonous” song.