by Red Hot Chili Peppers
~ The outlier of the outlier album ~
This whole album is full of things you wouldn’t expect from the Chili Peppers. Much more melodic vocals, and much more hummable melodies than you would ever expect from the punk-funk fusion that they were known for.
This album has John Frusciante all over it, as he was the primary songwriter for the majority of it. But even this is significantly different than you usually get from him. What’s interesting is that among an entire album of more mellow Chili Peppers songs that could almost get lost in a sea of mid-90s alt-rock, this one really sticks out as a louder, heavier, faster number.
The verses of the song aren’t even necessarily fully connected lines. The stray ‘nouns’ that pop up at the beginning of each verse don’t really seem to be connected at all, almost as if Anthony Kiedis was doing some sort of weird Rorschach test in the studio while recording it. The actual vocal lines are delivered in traditional Kiedis style with far more spoken word inflection than actual singing before a very singable chorus starts to show up.
Overall, this is the one song on the album that sounds the most like the Chili Peppers and it’s weird because it’s from the album that sounds least like the Chili Peppers.