Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' fifth album, hit the shelves on Warner Bros. on September 24, 1991, and it's the sound of a party band discovering it had a soul. Rick Rubin produced it, and he stripped away a lot of the heavy metal crunch that weighed down Mother's Milk two years earlier, clearing space for John Frusciante, whose guitar parts suddenly carried as much melody as muscle.

What's left is lean, loose and ridiculously funky: slap-happy bass lines, dry, close-up drums and guitar that knows when to shut up. The songs are drenched in sex, winking and otherwise, with drugs and death creeping in around the edges, but there's a giddy, can't-sit-still joy running through the whole thing too. "Give It Away" is a strutting, chanting workout; "Suck My Kiss" and "Breaking the Girl" push in opposite directions, one leering, one wistful; and "Under the Bridge" is the curveball, a lonely, aching ballad in the middle of all that strut.

Those songs, along with "If You Have to Ask", made the album a smash: number three on the Billboard 200, rave reviews and a new life as a worldwide phenomenon. Frusciante, badly unsettled by the fame, walked out during the 1992 tour and didn't come back until 1998. The record has kept its place as one of the cornerstones of the alternative rock boom of the '90s, it has sold over 14 million units, second only to Californication in the band's catalog, and in 2023 Flea said it was his favorite of all their albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.