Dear Gavin Rossdale

Wikipedia says this about your song, Glycerine: "Glycerine"is the fourth single from British grunge/post-grunge band Bush from their debut album Sixteen Stone. The power ballad is notable for featuring the cello."  It fails to mention that in 1995, to the 12 year olds in my class who had not yet found out about vodka, there was no more potent panty melter than that song.  Of course, we didn't know what panty melters were in the sixth grade at my Catholic school, but that is besides the point. 

Sure, at the middle school dances, "Lady in Red" was the go to for that first slow dance, where you dance with that gangly girl that is taller than any boy in the class.  If you needed to get freaky and let it hang out on the dance floor, that is why Rednexx wrote "Cotton Eye Joe".  It could be the only reason that song was written, other than as a joke, or to punish children that have eaten too many sweets and can't force their pudgy little bodies to remember what true fear feels like.  The wow factor came with that slow, slogging almost ballad.  That was when you looked for that girl you spent all math class pretending you weren't looking at, but subtlety isn't in the repertoire for any middle school kid. During those four minutes and twenty seven seconds, that was when the magic happened.

Every boy back then learned how to play that song on guitar, and every one of them made sure it was sung all angsty and slightly douchy, just like you.  Somehow we just knew you knew more about chicks than Eddie Vedder or Chris Cornell.  At least, you certainly looked less like you needed a bath or a comb.  Glycerine was the second song I learned after I got my guitar, after the theme from Top Gun, because, c'mon. I could not sing it and play at the same time, but still, I had a leg up on the bastards that played the flute in music class. 

It inevitably got the the point where everyone was using the song as the sixth grade siren call to hand holding and closed mouth kisses.  It got to be lame, and you failed to further pave the way for melancholy British acts to follow like Coldplay, and....Coldplay.  The closest thing you came up with was Swallowed on your next album, but that rocked just a bit too hard to set the mood.  We awkward almost teens had to turn to the newly released Vitology, and the gushiness that was Better Man. 

Dirty little Eddie Veddar bested you in the end, and you were forced to marry the weird chick from No Doubt as penance.