Need You Around
Smoking Popes song
"Need You Around" is a song by the Chicago-based pop punk band the Smoking Popes, released as the second single from their 1994 album Born to Quit. The album was originally released by Johann's Face Records in 1994, and "Need You Around" received radio play on Chicago's Q101 and Los Angeles' KROQ. When Born to Quit was re-released in July 1995 by Capitol Records after the band signed to that label, "Need You Around" and "Rubella" were remixed by Thom Wilson for release as singles (the album had been engineered, produced, and originally mixed by Phil Bonnet). A music video for "Need You Around" was filmed, and the song was featured in the soundtrack of the film Clueless. It became the only Smoking Popes song to chart, reaching #35 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks.
The single was released in two formats: as a 7" single with "Need You Around" as the A-side and the additional album track "Adena" as the B-side, and as a CD single with these two tracks as well as a cover version of Willie Nelson's "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground" and a live recording of "Adena".
"Need You Around" was covered by Retro Morning for the 2003 Smoking Popes Tribute album.
Josh Caterer recorded a new arrangement of "Need You Around" with John San Juan, Max Crawford and John Perrin in 2020 as the first single from The Hideout Sessions.
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Josh Caterer, except where noted.
“Need You Around” enters the record as smoking Popes song. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Need, Around and Smoking can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Need You Around” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Need, Around and Smoking provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6986483. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1994, 1995, 2003 and 2020.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Need You Around” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.