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song info
Give it Away by Red Hot Chili Peppers (official video) is a rap rock song.
Song Title: Give it Away (official video)
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Genre: funk rock rap rock
Composer: Copyright © 1991 Flea, John Frusciante, Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith
Lead Vocals: Anthony Kiedis
Guitar: John Frusciante
Bass Guitar: Flea
Drums: Chad Smith
Jaws harp: Pete Weiss
Director: Stéphane Sednaoui
Producer: Rick Rubin
Recorded: April–June 1991 at The Mansion in Los Angeles, California
Released: September 1991
Label: Warner Bros.
Official Website: redhotchilipeppers.com
Number of listens: 20936
U.S. Billboard Hot 100: peak #73
Modern Rock: peak #1 (one)
Australian ARIA Singles: peak #41
French Singles: peak #49
Irish Singles: peak #19
United Kingdom: peak #9
Billboard information for the week of Oct 13, 2012
Billboard chart listings courtesy of Billboard Magazine
Summary quotation from Wikipedia:
Give It Away is a song by the American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers from the groups fifth studio album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. It was released as the lead single from their album on September 1991, by Warner Bros. Records. The music was written by guitarist John Frusciante and bassist Flea during a jam session months prior to the album recording sessions. Vocalist Anthony Kiedis wrote the songs most prevalent lyrical refrain in response to an experience he shared with former girlfriend Nina Hagen regarding altruistic behavior and the value of selflessness.
While several radio stations originally refused to air the song because they felt it lacked melody, Give It Away went on to achieve international fame. It peaked at number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks in late 1991, giving the band their first ever number one single. In 1992 the single charted inside the top seventy-five of the U.S. Hot 100 in the wake of the huge success of the records second single Under the Bridge. Give It Away also became the bands first top ten hit in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at number nine on the UK Singles Chart.
The accompanying music video, which was directed by French film-maker Stéphane Sednaoui, was put into heavy rotation on music-television stations such as MTV and added to the bands success. Since its release, Give It Away has gone on to receive numerous accolades, including a Grammy Award for the Best Hard Rock Performance With Vocals in 1992. Steve Huey of Allmusic noted that while the single didnt achieve the massive pop success of its follow-up, Under the Bridge [
] it did become one of the bands most instantly recognizable songs.
Origins and recording
Guitarist John Frusciante and bassist Flea wrote much of Give It Away during jam sessions in the early 1990s. Following the Chili Peppers tour in support of Mothers Milk (1989), the duo spent time in a side project called H.A.T.E. with members of Fishbone. During their tenure in the group, the guitarist and bassist created the main riff and accompanying bassline for Give It Away. The rhythm was played at several H.A.T.E. performances shortly thereafter, but when the side project disbanded Frusciante and Flea believed the track would be appropriate for the Chili Peppers upcoming record. Vocalist Anthony Kiedis agreed, and upon hearing the rest of the Chili Peppers play the song he began chanting give it away, give it away, give it away now. The phrase had been something the vocalist intended to incorporate into a song for the bands new record, but it was not until he heard the bassline that the lyrics fit. Kiedis said, I was so struck by Fleas bass part, which covered the whole length of the instruments neck, that I jumped up and marched over to the mic, my notebook in tow. I always had fragments of songs and ideas or even specific isolated phrases in mind.
The song was recorded between April and June 1991 at The Mansion in Los Angeles, California. Through the recording of Give It Away came a practice of crafting songs that the band would continue to use on every album following Blood Sugar Sex Magik. When the group encountered difficulty in composing a bridge for the song, it developed a tool the members colloquially termed face-offs. Flea and Frusciante were unable to come to an agreement on guitar or bass progressions, but separately crafted part of the song. The band then reconvened at a later time and chose the most appropriate inclusion. With Give It Away, a chorus and verse had already been written but a bridge was lacking, so thus they partook in a face-off.
Lyrics and meaning
The lyrical meaning behind Give It Away is centered around the philosophy of selflessness and altruistic behavior. The song is titled after its most prevalent lyrical phrase give it away, which is taken from an experience Kiedis had with his former girlfriendpunk rock singer Nina Hagenin the early 1980s. Hagen was several years Kiedis senior and became a role-model during his drug addiction to heroin: she realized how young and inexperienced I was then, so she was always passing on gems to me, not in a preachy way, just by seizing on opportunities. When Kiedis was looking through her closet he came across a jacket he liked, and commented to Hagen that it was really cool. Upon expressing this, Hagen immediately told him to keep it. Her reasoning behind this selflessness was due to an attempt to constantly make her life more enjoyable, and explained to Kiedis that if you have a closet full of clothes and you try to keep them all, your life will get very small. But if you have a full closet and someone sees something they like, if you give it to them, the world is a better place.
The act was something that affected Kiedis significantly because he had never before experienced such an enlightening ideology on life. Growing up in Los Angeles he had always thought differently than Hagen; instead of giving material possessions away and being free thinking the vocalist believed one must take what they want as no one will provide for you. Instead, he now adopted Hagens philosophy: It was such an epiphany that someone would want to give me her favorite thing. That stuck with me forever. Every time Id be thinking I have to keep, Id remember No, you gotta give away instead. When I started going regularly to [drug and alcohol] meetings, one of the principles I had learned was that the way to maintain your own sobriety is to give it to another suffering alcoholic. Every time you empty your vessel of that energy, fresh new energy comes flooding in. Fleas bassline for the song allowed Kiedis to recall this incident and he believed the music paired perfectly with the lyrics. During the verses, Kiedis departs from the idea of unselfishness and sings about a variety of topics including long time friend River Phoenix, musician Bob Marley and various sexual themes including fertility and lust.
Give It Away makes use of far drier production than previous Red Hot Chili Peppers material by removing reverb and guitar layering. Producer Rick Rubin disavowed walls of sound and layering for simpler, more concise guitar and bass progressions.
Music and composition
Give It Away is performed in the time signature of 4/4 time. The track begins with a distinctively dry guitar tone that is similar in style to the rest of the record. Producer, Rick Rubin,had a considerable influence on the sound of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by removing much of the reverb and guitar layering that epitomized the bands previous album Mothers Milk. This caused the record to contain simpler and dryer guitar and bass chords that were not filtered through guitar effectsthose that did, however, were made with vintage electronics from the 1960s and 70s. For Give It Away, along with the rest of the album, Rubin sought to achieve a sense of atmosphere that was similar to 60s records that were made without commercialism or viability in mind and to downplay on big sounds: What you hear is what you gettheres not a lot of trickery. A lot of people want the biggest sound, with walls of guitar and huge drums. But I dont think those things matter. The song follows a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure; when Kiedis begins singing, Frusciante jumps into a funk-oriented riff that is repeated throughout the verse while Flea plays a complex bass-line that makes use of virtually the entire fretboard.
During the chorus, Kiedis sings Give it away, give it away, give it away now repeatedly over a more rapid guitar riff before Frusciante provides, according to Steve Huey of Allmusic, a sudden contrast to Kiedis hyperactivity in the form of a languid solo pre-recorded and dubbed backwards over the rhythm track. The solo was recorded in one take because Frusciante had developed a preference towards speedy execution and a raw feeling; according to Flea, We did very little fix-up stuff. Johns philosophy was that he would only play a solo twice. Hed play it once, and if he didnt like it or we didnt like it, hed play it againcompletely different. And that was it. Give It Away also makes use of other instruments like the jaws harp, which was played by band friend Pete Weiss. The song continues through several verses and choruses before reaching a bridge that introduces the outro, which consists of a hard-rocking riff that, according to Huey, strongly resembles the main riff from Black Sabbaths Sweet Leaf from their 1971 record Master of Reality. Kiedis repeats Give it away now for several measures before the guitar, bass and drums drop out.
Release and reception
Give It Away was released as the lead single from Blood Sugar Sex Magik in early September 1991, shortly before the record went on sale. Warner Bros. sought to premiere the song on a popular rock radio station in Texas, but were turned down when the format refused to air the trackthey told employees at the label to come back to us when you have a melody in your song. The band then embarked on a short press tour through Europe in order to promote the record; it was during this time that KROQ-FM, a Los Angeles-based modern rock station, began to place Give It Away on heavy rotation. According to Kiedis, That was the beginning of the infusion of those songs into mass consciousness.
Music video
Frusciante playing a reflective silver Fender Stratocaster and wearing sequined pants in the music video for Give It Away.
The music video for Give It Away was made by French fashion photographer and director Stéphane Sednaoui. Kiedis wanted the video to be visually distinct and readily identifiable but disliked much of the material Warner Bros. sent for him to choose from: I started viewing reels and reels and reels of video directors but nothing looked good to me. Everything was the same, boring, homogenized, contrived shit. Upon finding Sednaouis reel, however, Kiedis noticed it was like nothing else. It was slower and poetic, shot in black and white. It seemed like authentic art, not something shot for MTV. He and Flea met with Sednaoui to talk about the video, for which the director proposed a very desolated [and] very graphic landscape, while heavily focusing on the band members with little to no outside influence. It was decided that the video would be filmed in black and white while Sednaoui took the idea of painting the band members with silver acrylic from previous photo shoots he had done. Sednaoui recalls that he was amazed by what [the band] gave me because they went far far far beyond what I was expecting and I think thats one of my best experiences in that regard. The overall mood of the video was intended to be a personification of the song, which is upbeat and lively.
Sednaoui experimented with a variety of cinematography techniques including wide-angle lenses, shots from below the subjects, superimposition, vertically cut screens displaying different angles of the same shot, reverse film effects, multiple lighting situations and flashy clothing to convey his concept. Frusciante noted the feeling of the video to be extremely vibrant and over the top: When it was us just painting ourselves silver and wearing these big silver boots and stuff, I mean it felt like glam rock or something. The video begins with a wide-angle shot of Flea in a desert setting wearing pants with several gold colored horns protruding from each leg. The bassist is standing in a meditative stance and brings his arms together above his head when the music begins to play. The video then transitions between a variety of shots edited together that consist of the four band members standing with their eyes closed; the band dancing around in a dimly lit setting; a ground view of Frusciante playing a reflective silver Fender Stratocaster in between his legs while wearing pants made up entire of small pieces of mirror; the band members moving around with full makeup on; and the band members dancing frenziedly. Kiedis adopted a deliberately outlandish wardrobe which incorporated gold lipstick, thinly braided hair, revealing meshed shorts and bright silver boots.
During the backwards guitar solo, Frusciante was filmed waving a large aluminum ribbon; Kiedis was initially apprehensive about Sednaouis desire for the guitarist to do so, believing he would tell the director Fuck you and take that dancing ribbon and shove it up your French ass, buddy but [Frusciante] gladly went off and made love to the air with this dancing ribbon. He would have danced around for hours with that thing. The footage was edited in reverse to complement the solo. While some of the scenes in the video were planned with a storyboard, much of it was improvised or made up on the spot over the two-day shoot. During a particular scene Kiedis began to move his tongue flamboyantly to dramatically accentuate the lyrics, which Sednaoui believed was extremely beneficial to the exuberant nature of the video. Where the video begins in what appears to be the daytime, it concludes at dusk with silhouettes of the band members running into the setting sun.
The videowhich cost an estimated $140,000 to producewas completed while Kiedis and Frusciante were on a promotional trip through Europe in support of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. When the vocalist first saw it, he was more hysterically ecstatic about that piece of visual footage than anything [the band had] ever done. Warner Bros. executives, however, were worried that the content would be too weird or too artsy for the general public and favored a more traditional premise in contrast to the experimental approach Sednaoui took. The video was ultimately released without being edited by the record label; since then it has been widely credited as being a considerable factor in the Red Hot Chili Peppers success and greatly increased their international popularity. Journalist Jeff Apter noted the videos funky brew of goofy looks, a subtle invasive hook, Fleas spindly fingered baseline and Kiedis crotch-hugging shorts made the clip essential viewing across MTV throughout the last few months of 1991. Steve Huey of Allmusic commented in his review of the song that MTV jumped all over the visually distinctive video. It was nominated for three awardsBest Alternative Video, Breakthrough Video, and Best Art Directionat the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, for which it won the latter two.
from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedias block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedias original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)
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