page_title: Powderfinger
section_title: Critical acclaim and chart success (1998–2003)
hierarchical_section_title: Powderfinger / History / Critical acclaim and chart success (1998–2003)
caption_attribution_description: Lead guitarist Ian Haug of Powderfinger performing at the Across the Great Divide Tour in Sydney in 2007.
context_page_description: Powderfinger were an Australian rock band formed in Brisbane in 1989. From 1992 until their break-up in 2010 the line-up consisted of vocalist Bernard Fanning, guitarists Darren Middleton and Ian Haug, bass guitarist John Collins and drummer Jon Coghill. The group's third studio album Internationalist peaked at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart in September 1998. They followed with four more number-one studio albums in a row: Odyssey Number Five, Vulture Street, Dream Days at the Hotel Existence and Golden Rule. Their Top Ten hit singles are "My Happiness", " On My Mind" and "Lost and Running". Powderfinger earned a total of eighteen ARIA Awards, making them the second-most awarded band behind Silverchair. Ten Powderfinger albums and DVDs certified multiple-platinum, with Odyssey Number Five – their most successful album – achieving eightfold platinum certification for shipment of over 560,000 units.
  After the release of their first DVD, These Days: Live in Concert, and the compilation album Fingerprints: The Best of Powderfinger, 1994–2000, the group announced a hiatus in 2005.
context_section_description: On 7 September 1998, Powderfinger released their third studio album, Internationalist, which peaked at No. 1 and spent 101 weeks in the Top 50 of the ARIA Albums Chart; it was produced by Nick DiDia (Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam). AllMusic's Jonathan Lewis had mixed feelings about the album. He was enchanted by its lead single, "The Day You Come", however "the rest of the album didn't measure up" except for "some fine tracks" in "Don't Wanna Be Left Out" and "Already Gone". Nevertheless, by 2007 the album had shipped over 350,000 copies and was certified five times platinum domestically, and had reached European audiences. Internationalist was the first Powderfinger album to win any ARIA Music Awards. At the 1999 ceremony it won "Album of the Year", "Best Rock Album", and "Best Cover Art" (by Kevin Wilkins), and "The Day You Come" won "Single of the Year". "Passenger", another single from Internationalist, was nominated for three additional categories in the following year. The band was both praised and criticised for their political views on Internationalist. In a November 1998 interview with Benedict Watts of Juice Magazine, Haug said that political messages in "The Day You Come" were not something they were just preaching about, but rather were something they saw as a responsibility.
  Powderfinger's fourth studio album, Odyssey Number Five, was released on 4 September 2000, and also peaked at No. 1. Entertainment Weekly's Marc Weingarten provided a positive review and found the group "prove that there's still terrain left to be explored [in] guitar rock ... melancholy is the default mode ... [they] can be as prim as Travis or as mock-grandiose as Oasis". However, Allmusic's Dean Carlson was more negative, seeing the album as "little more than a slightly off-base perspective into the world of mid-90s American grunge". Odyssey Number Five is Powderfinger's most commercially successful album, shipping 560,000 copies and certified eight times platinum by 2004. It also appeared on the New Zealand Albums Chart at No. 15. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2001, the group won "Album of the Year", "Highest Selling Album", "Best Rock Album", "Best Cover Art" (by Wilkins), and "Best Group".
  Two of Odyssey Number Five's tracks featured on film soundtracks: "These Days", written for Two Hands (1999), and "My Kind of Scene" in Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). Singles from the album are "My Kind of Scene", "My Happiness", "Like a Dog", and the double A-side "The Metre" / "Waiting for the Sun". "My Happiness", which peaked at No. 4 in Australia and No. 7 in New Zealand, is the group's highest-charting single in both countries. At the ARIA Awards ceremony, "My Happiness" won "Single of the Year", and other songs were nominated in various categories. Their tracks received votes from national radio station Triple J's listeners on annual Hottest 100 lists: "These Days", "Already Gone", "Good-Day Ray", and "Passenger" were ranked in 1999, and "My Happiness" and "My Kind of Scene" in 2000. In 2009, "These Days" was voted at No. 21 and "My Happiness" at No. 27 in the Hottest 100 of all time, placing them as second- and fourth-highest Australian tracks after the Hilltop Hoods' "The Nosebleed Section" and Hunters & Collectors' "Throw Your Arms Around Me", respectively.
caption: Ian Haug, another founding mainstay, is on lead guitar in Sydney in September 2007.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot S3 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.1.3", "Image DateTime": "2007:09:09 21:06:23", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.4.8", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "254", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "630", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4055", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:09:08 22:28:56", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:09:08 22:28:56", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "181/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "259/5", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area"}