For the mannequins, see Crash test dummy.
Crash Test Dummies are a Canadian folk-rock group, who were popular in the early 1990s.
Formed in 1989 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the group quickly signed to a major label and released their debut album, The Ghosts that Haunt Me, on April 5, 1991. An unusual combination of folk-rock stylings with witty and offbeat lyrics and the attention-grabbing voice of vocalist Brad Roberts, the album became one of the year's best-selling records in Canada on the strength of the hit single "Superman's Song". It has sold nearly 500,000 copies in Canada, and won that year's Juno Award for Group of the Year.
On October 15, 1993, they released the follow-up, the more polished and matured God Shuffled His Feet. It was also a success, with the first single, " Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm", becoming a major pop hit internationally as well as in Canada and parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic under the title " Headline News". The title track, " Afternoons and Coffeespoons", and "Swimming in Your Ocean" were also major hits on the Canadian pop charts, although they didn't follow suit outside of North America. The album would go on to sell nearly six million copies in America, and nearly ten million worldwide.
On October 2, 1996, A Worm's Life, their most overtly hard guitar-rock album, proved to be the beginning of the end for the band's commercial fortunes, selling poorly compared to its two predecessors and only spawning the minor hits "He Liked to Feel It" (with a video featuring a young boy finding ways to pull out his baby teeth) and "My Own Sunrise". It ended up selling two or three million copies worldwide.
Give Yourself a Hand, released on March 23, 1999, confirmed this decline -- although it included the Canadian radio hit "Keep a Lid on Things", the album's experiments in R&B and electronic dance music garnered the most negative reviews of the band's career, and sold poorly.
