Red Hot Chilli Peppers Greatest Songs
Jeana Rodia
Greatest Hits is the second greatest hits album and second compilation album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on Nov. 18, 2003, by Warner Bros. Records. Aside from their cover of "Higher Ground", all songs on the album are from the band's tenure on Warner Bros. Records from 1991 to 2002, in addition to two newly recorded songs.
While their first hits compilation album What Hits!? encompasses material from their 1984 debut to 1989's Mother's Milk, this collection of songs takes off from that point, including material from their 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik up through their 2002 album By the Way. It was during this period of their career that the band became a major commercial force in the music industry. Therefore, this compilation includes the majority of hit singles released since their breakthrough cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground".
"My Friends" is the only track included from the 1995 album, One Hot Minute. However, the music video for "Aeroplane" is featured on the DVD version of the compilation. "Warped", the lead single from One Hot Minute, is also absent as both a song and music video on the DVD.
Of the band's eight U.S. number-one singles on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart up to that point, only one, "Can't Stop", from their 2002 album By the Way, was excluded, though the music video was featured on the DVD.
Also absent were top-10 hits "Around the World," from their 1999 album Californication and "The Zephyr Song" from By the Way although the DVD contained the music videos for the songs. Conversely, "Breaking the Girl" was not included on the DVD, as well as "Parallel Universe," the latter of which never had a music video released.
In 2011, drummer Chad Smith discussed the recording sessions for Greatest Hits, mentioning that the band had recorded 16 songs and wished to release an entirely new album just for this material after a brief tour; however, guitarist John Frusciante was heavily against this idea at the time, claiming that his playing style had evolved and changed too much, as had his musical influences. Smith said there was an entire Red Hot Chili Peppers album out there that nobody would ever hear.[6]
On February 7, 2014, in an interview with fans on Reddit, Smith claimed that the band hoped to one day release a box set including all unreleased material from the recording sessions for Greatest Hits.[8]
Singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea have kept the band together and have stayed relevant far longer than most of their peers or their idols. We took a deep dive into the hits and some album tracks to come up with this list of their 42 greatest songs.
When Johm Frusciante rejoined the band, they showed that the most successful lineup still had something to say (and a lot of it: they released two double albums in a year). Take a look through our countdown of their 42 best songs (and yes, the list surely could have been much longer).
Welcome to \u201CIs This Band Good?\u201D, a semi-regular feature where I, with the help of a knowledgeable and accomplished musician, try to determine\u2014quantitatively\u2014if certain bands are actually good.
We all knew this was coming. From the very first moment the words \u201CIs This Band Good?\u201D left my fingertips, you\u2019ve wondered when we were going to tackle Red Hot Chili Peppers, right? If not, you probably don\u2019t live in Southern California.
There are tons of reasons to like or dislike the Chilis, but down here, they just hit differently. Like Sublime, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are just part of the atmosphere, exemplifying the sun-soaked excess and wild desperation of Southern California, and asking whether they\u2019re good is almost like asking if air is good. You don\u2019t have to live here to judge the band on its musical merit, but in LA and San Diego, your Red Hot Chili Opinion becomes your personality.
This makes it difficult to look at the band objectively. I guess this is true for any band that has been in the zeitgeist as long as RHCP. But try this: Imagine you\u2019re an alien, you\u2019ve just landed on Earth and hear this band\u2019s music. It\u2019s wild. It conveys an existence that\u2019s the complete opposite of most human life. It\u2019s the most not normal. And better yet, it\u2019s hugely successful, both critically and financially. Just look at all their Grammys. Certainly, this group\u2014what carbon-based lifeforms call the \u201CRed Hot Chili Peppers\u201D\u2014must be the greatest band in history, perhaps even royalty of some sort.
The band formed in the \u201880s and quickly earned a reputation for rampant drug use and bonkers live shows that fused funk, rap, and punk (kind of a proto n\u00FC metal). When they started putting out albums, they attracted the attention of some genuinely cool people: Gang of Four\u2019s guitarist Andy Gill produced self-titled debut (even though his relationship with Anthony Kiedis quickly soured), and George Clinton produced the band\u2019s second album Freaky Styley.
To get a sense of how wild and novel this band was at the time, look no further than their cameo in the 1986 film Tough Guys, about two old-timey gangsters who\u2014after serving a very long prison term\u2014are released, only to find modern society and music crrrraaazy.
In 1989, during the production of Mother\u2019s Milk, founding guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose, and young Chili superfan John Frusciante stepped in to replace him. The band also picked up drummer Chad Smith, thereby solidifying what would be known as the quintessential iteration of the band.
With the help of producer/exploiter/povocateur/beard-haver, Rick Rubin, the Chilis (so many fun ways to refer to this band!) pretty much won the \u201890s by bookending the decade with two monster albums: Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Californication, with One Hot Minute in between them. Californication found the band trading funky anarchy for sensitivity and actual melodies, and that\u2019s pretty much the gear they\u2019ve been coasting in for the past 20 years. They\u2019ve also started wearing shirts (occasionally), and I don\u2019t know how/if that has affected their music, but it\u2019s worth noting.
Forty years into their career, there\u2019s no denying Red Hot Chili Peppers are arguably the biggest rock band in the world (maybe only second to Foo Fighters). They\u2019ve persevered through tragedy, death, and drug addiction. They\u2019re in the Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Hall of Fame. Their power is so complete that fans will get the band\u2019s logo tattooed on their bodies, despite it looking like a butthole. And if you badmouth them whilst in LA, the cops will arrest you.
Ryan Bradford: When I was young, I found the Red Hot Chili Peppers vaguely frightening. Blood Sugar Sex Magik might have been the first album I\u2019d seen with an explicit content label on the cover, and that reason alone made me want to steer clear. Also, try being a wee Mormon lad and having an album with the word \u201Csex\u201D in the title. Not easy!
But cut to the summer of 1999. I was 14 years old, I had just graduated eighth grade and survived what I presumed to be the worst part of my life (I wasn\u2019t wrong). I was stoked. New school, new me, I thought. My mom had also recently moved into a condo that had cable\u2014a first for me. So when she was at work, I spent hours watching Total Request Live on MTV, which seemed to play on an endless loop. Seems like hell now.
Do I remember how many times I saw the video for \u201CScar Tissue\u201D before Californication actually dropped? No. Did it matter? Double nope! Just like me, the Chili Peppers seemed to be in the process of reinvention. The songs were softer, more personal, and hinted at the sort of elementary melancholy that defines the life of a newly-turned teenager. Plus, Anthony Kiedis had bleached hair. Radical.
I bought Californication the day it came out, as well as a home hair-bleaching kit. I remember listening to track after track of Red Hot Chili Brilliance as the peroxide burned into my scalp. And because I wanted that newfound Kiedis-level of blonde, I let the bleach sit for another round of Californication\u2014far longer than the packaging instructed. Afterwards, when the sun hit my head, even God Himself would\u2019ve squinted.
Later, when I was a senior in high school, my best friend Ryen Schlegel and I somehow found ourselves in a weight lifting class with a bunch of freshmen. Even though most of them were bigger than us, we had seniority and controlled what music played from the PA, and a lot of times it was Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Imagine two nerdy seniors bench-pressing the 40-lb bar while Anthony Kiedis yelled \u201CSUCK MY KISS!\u201D
Since moving to San Diego a decade ago, the ubiquity of Red Hot Chili Peppers\u2019 music has turned my affection sour. It\u2019s hard for me to listen to them now without cringing. And on really bad days, I wish harm upon their fans.
Shelby Wentz: Flea taught me how to play bass. Okay, maybe not literally\u2014like he wasn\u2019t shirtless in my one-bedroom apartment when I was 12 years old (totes innapropes) slapping out the bassline to \u201CHigher Ground.\u201D But he was the one-man inspo and only reference I had at the time on what a bass player was supposed to be like, from the sheltered perspective of a middle-schooler who had barely saved up enough money from babysitting to buy her first bass (cherry red Fender Jazz Squire on sale for $99 at Guitar Center). I thought Flea was a musical genius. I even painted a large, acrylic portrait of him that was equally awesome and terrible.
The year was 1998 and the song \u201CHigher Ground\u201D had been released almost a decade prior. When I heard it on the radio, it was the first time I\u2019d ever heard bass sound that way, and I knew I wanted to learn it because, well, I thought it was SO COOL. I didn\u2019t know what \u201Cslap bass\u201D was, but after I dialed up my internet (literally) and found some info (likely using Ask Jeeves) I discovered what the thumpy, sproingy sound was called. I found a bass tabs website, and using a lined sheet of paper I carefully wrote down the tablature (we didn\u2019t have a printer, and you weren\u2019t going to catch me sneaking bass tab printouts at the school library). Then, for the final piece of my education (and in order for the tabs to make sense), I watched MTV until \u201CHigher Ground\u201D played and recorded it on a VHS tape so I could watch it over and over to understand the technique (being careful not to go over my mom\u2019s Melrose Place episodes, God forbid).
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