The 1990s File Feature
It's All Been Done
It's All Been Done: Barenaked Ladies and the Song That Crossed Eras on the Hot 100 Barenaked Ladies, the Toronto-based band formed in 1988 by Ed Robertson an…
01 The Story
It's All Been Done: Barenaked Ladies and the Song That Crossed Eras on the Hot 100
Barenaked Ladies, the Toronto-based band formed in 1988 by Ed Robertson and Steven Page, had built an unusually devoted Canadian fanbase through years of relentless touring and a reputation for witty, musically sophisticated pop that defied easy genre categorization. Their blend of folk-influenced guitar playing, melodic pop songwriting, rapid-fire wordplay, and knowing humor had made them a cult phenomenon in Canada long before they achieved mainstream recognition in the United States. The breakthrough came with the 1998 album "Stunt," released on Reprise Records, which became their commercial watershed and produced one of the most unlikely number-one hits of the late 1990s, "One Week."
"It's All Been Done" was written by Ed Robertson, the band's co-lead vocalist and one of its primary guitarists, and it appeared on "Stunt" as one of the album's strongest tracks. Where "One Week" was a frenetic, rapidly delivered piece of verbal gymnastics that showcased the band's more comedic tendencies, "It's All Been Done" demonstrated their capacity for melodic directness and emotional resonance. The song was built on a distinctive guitar riff that Robertson had developed, supported by the band's characteristically tight rhythm section and the warm interplay of Page and Robertson's voices.
The production on "Stunt" was handled by Don Was, the acclaimed producer whose work with a wide range of artists had made him one of the most sought-after figures in the American recording industry. Was brought a sonic clarity and commercial sheen to the Barenaked Ladies' sound without stripping away the eccentric personality that had made them distinctive, a balance that proved crucial to the album's crossover appeal. The recording of "It's All Been Done" showcased that balance particularly well, with a production that was warm, accessible, and radio-friendly while still preserving the musical intelligence of Robertson's songwriting.
The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 26, 1998 at position 74, entering the chart at the tail end of a year that "Stunt" had largely dominated for the band. It climbed steadily through the first weeks of 1999, moving from 74 to 66, then 61, 57, 51, and continuing upward to reach its peak position of number 44 on January 30, 1999. The song spent 12 weeks total on the Hot 100, its chart run spanning the New Year and representing a perfect illustration of the album's sustained commercial momentum across the turn of the year.
The song's chart performance on the Hot 100 was matched by strong results on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, where Barenaked Ladies had already established themselves as a significant presence with "One Week" and other material from "Stunt." The modern rock audience responded enthusiastically to the song's blend of melodic accessibility and lyrical sophistication, recognizing in it the qualities that had made the band critical darlings before they became mainstream stars. Radio programmers at Top 40 stations also gave the single attention, extending its reach beyond the core alternative audience.
The music video for "It's All Been Done" received substantial rotation on MTV and Much Music, Canada's music video network, where Barenaked Ladies had long been featured prominently. The video captured the band's performance energy and the chemistry between Page and Robertson that had always been central to their live appeal, presenting them as a unit with genuine personality rather than a faceless commercial product.
"Stunt" ultimately sold over four million copies in the United States alone, a figure that placed it among the most commercially successful rock albums of 1998 and established Barenaked Ladies as a genuine mainstream act rather than a cult curiosity. "It's All Been Done" was one of the key singles that sustained that commercial momentum through the crucial post-Christmas sales period, demonstrating that the album had genuine depth beyond the novelty appeal of "One Week." The song remains one of the more beloved tracks in the band's catalog, performed regularly in live shows and frequently cited by fans as an example of Robertson's underappreciated melodic gift.
02 Song Meaning
Cycles of Connection: The Philosophical Heart of "It's All Been Done"
"It's All Been Done" engages with one of the more fascinating ideas available to a songwriter: the notion that human experience, and specifically human romantic experience, is fundamentally cyclical, that the feelings and situations that seem most personal and specific to any individual have in fact been lived through by countless others across time and will be lived again by those who come after. This is a philosophical position that could easily tip into nihilism or resignation, but Ed Robertson's lyric handles it with a lightness and warmth that transforms the idea into something celebratory rather than deflating.
The temporal framework of the song is its most distinctive structural feature. Robertson moves the narrative across different historical periods, suggesting that the same essential connection between two specific people (or versions of them) has been occurring repeatedly through history. This device does several things simultaneously: it makes the romantic relationship feel both specific and universal, it situates contemporary experience within a longer human continuum, and it introduces a sense of inevitability that is emotionally quite different from fate in the tragic sense. The repetition here is not entrapment but affirmation; the fact that this has happened before means it is real, it is valid, it belongs to the human story.
The title phrase "it's all been done" could in another context express exhaustion or cynicism, the sense that nothing new is possible, that all experiences have been depleted of freshness. But Robertson deploys it in a way that inverts that potential meaning. The fact that something has been done before does not make it less meaningful; if anything, the lyric suggests, it makes it more so, because it locates the experience within the universal human archive of feeling rather than treating it as an isolated event that must justify itself from scratch.
The musical setting reinforces this reading. The song's melodic generosity, its easy, flowing verse structure and its emotionally open chorus, creates an atmosphere of acceptance and warmth that matches the lyric's philosophical stance. There is no anxiety in the music about the song's central proposition; the music has already made peace with it. This alignment between lyric and melody is one of the reasons the song works so well as an integrated piece of communication rather than merely as an interesting set of words over a pleasant tune.
Barenaked Ladies as a band had always been interested in the intersection of intelligence and accessibility, in writing songs that rewarded close attention without withholding their pleasures from listeners who simply wanted something melodic and engaging. "It's All Been Done" exemplifies this approach: it is genuinely thought-provoking as a lyrical document while being entirely satisfying as a pop song, and the thinking does not interfere with the feeling but deepens it. The song's endurance in the band's live repertoire speaks to the fact that audiences continue to find both dimensions rewarding, which is a fairly reliable indicator of a song's quality.
There is also a quietly reassuring quality to the song's message that may account for some of its emotional appeal. In a cultural moment that valorizes novelty and originality as the highest goods, the lyric gently insists that the most important human experiences do not need to be original to be profound. Love does not become less real because others have loved before; connection does not become less meaningful because it participates in a pattern older than individual lives. That insight, delivered with warmth and humor rather than solemnity, is the song's genuine contribution to the catalog of things pop music has managed to say.
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