Cracked Rear View is Hootie & the Blowfish's most successful album. It was the highest-selling album of 1995, with 10.5 million shipments that year alone. It eventually shipped 16 million copies by March 31, 1999. Cracked Rear View reached number one on the Billboard 200 five times during 1995. The album also reached number one in Canada[4] and New Zealand.[5] Three million copies were sold through the Columbia House mail-order system.[6]
Critical reviews of Cracked Rear View were mostly positive. The Allmusic review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave it four and a half stars out of five. He wrote that it was "the success story of 1994/1995." He also said, "Although Hootie & the Blowfish aren't innovative, they deliver the goods. They turned out an album of solid, rootsy folk-rock songs that have simple, powerful hooks."[1]
