With a playful approach to pop-punk and melodic alt-pop, the Texas quartet Bowling for Soup achieved mainstream recognition in the early 2000s via their breakout fourth album Drunk Enough to Dance, which earned a Grammy nomination for the hooky pop culture-referencing single "Girl All the Bad Guys Want." Throughout the following decade the group sustained a devoted core audience, cracking the Billboard Top 40 with 2004's A Hangover You Don't Deserve while gaining stronger footing in the U.K. as a reliable live act. Across their career Bowling for Soup delivered a wide-ranging catalog inside their melodic pop-punk framework, issuing three live albums (each captured in the U.K.), two Christmas albums, a set of movie and television themes, and an acoustic project, and they also composed the theme for the Disney cartoon Phineas and Ferb. Following ten years on RCA's Jive Records they started their own Que-So label and relied on fan support to finance albums such as 2014's Lunch. Drunk. Love. and 2016's Drunk Dynasty.
Bowling for Soup originated in 1994 in Wichita Falls, Texas, with lead vocalist/guitarist Jaret Reddick, guitarist/vocalist Chris Burney, bassist Erik Chandler, and drummer Gary Wiseman. They stayed largely regional until 1997, when relentless road work expanded their reach and earned support slots alongside established punk and ska acts. In 1998 they cut a debut EP, Tell Me When to Whoa!, for the local FFROE label; by then the band had relocated its base to Denton, Texas, where the label was headquartered. Later that same year Bowling for Soup released their first full-length, Rock on Honorable Ones!!! Both early releases found strong regional traction—Honorable Ones alone moved more than 10,000 copies—and the band secured a contract with Jive/Silvertone.
Their 2000 major-label debut, Let's Do It for Johnny!, revisited standout tracks from prior indie releases while adding fresh material that included the lead single "The Bitch Song" and a cover of Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69." Two years afterward they issued Drunk Enough to Dance and again drew Grammy attention for "Girl All the Bad Guys Want." A Hangover You Don't Deserve arrived in 2004 and yielded another hit in "1985," lifting the album to number 37 on the Billboard 200. Bowling for Soup followed in 2005 with Goes to the Movies, interpreting assorted television and film themes. The Great Burrito Extortion Case appeared in fall 2006, led by the buoyant single "High School Never Ends," and Sorry for Partyin'—their seventh studio album—came out in late 2009. They closed the year with the holiday release Merry Flippin' Christmas, Vol. 1, then launched an acoustic tour in 2010 and tracked their eleventh studio album that summer. Fishin' for Woos was completed in three weeks and issued in 2011; a second holiday set, Merry Flippin' Christmas, Vol. 2, also surfaced that year.
In 2013 the members revealed that the demands of touring had strained their private lives, so Bowling for Soup would end U.K. dates after that year, closing the European chapter with a final run following the release of their twelfth album, the entirely fan-funded Lunch. Drunk. Love. To mark their twentieth anniversary in 2014 they put out the greatest-hits collection Songs People Actually Liked, Vol. 1: The First 10 Years 1994-2003, featuring newly recorded versions of seventeen tracks plus one original song. Two years later they once more used PledgeMusic to underwrite their next studio effort; Drunk Dynasty, their thirteenth album, reached stores in October 2016. In 2018 the band staged one additional U.K. visit via the Get Happy Tour, which featured a February show at London's Brixton Academy later documented as Live from Brixton: Older, Fatter, Still the Greatest Ever! In January 2019 the group confirmed that founding bassist Erik Chandler had departed and was succeeded by Rob Felicetti.
