Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication": Why This Song Sucks
[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]
Song: Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication"
History: "Californication" is from RHCP's Californication, an album that people high-fived when it was released but seems to grow weaker with each passing year. I mean, this was probably the best song on there, and it's cool and all, but it was better the first time I heard it, back in 1992 when they were calling it "Under The Bridge." This song is to the Red Hot Chili Peppers as The Quest is to Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Atmospherics: Like if they sold melancholy at Walgreens; like if maybe they forgot how brilliant they could be when they were really trying ("Give It Away"); like every high school kid's alt-mixtape at the end of the '90s.
Scientific Analysis: Let's disassemble "Californication" by mentioning it briefly and then talking about something else entirely.
In 1999, after RHCP released Californication, they experienced a mega-resurgence in popularity at my high school. Everybody loved them. EVERYBODY. I don't imagine it was too different at anybody's school (unless you had a lot of Black people at your school; we had less than ten, so I don't know). I remember my loser friends and I soaked up all the RHCP stuff we could find. It was so much fun.
The best: When we found the video for 1991's "Give It Away." Remember that one? That's the one where they were painted silver and everything was shot in black and white by that French director? Oh man, when we watched it, when we saw Anthony Kiedis flashing his taint like a goddamn superhero of cool for the first time, it was like someone had scooped out all of our brains and smashed them on the floor.
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