“Infected” by Bad Religion

Brett Gurewitz wrote "Infected" for Stranger Than Fiction, Bad Religion's eighth album, out on Atlantic in 1994, and he said later it was his shot at writing a grunge song: Nirvana had shown that loud guitars could get on the radio as long as the tempo didn't scare anyone. So the punk lifers slowed to a mid-tempo churn and let the melody breathe.

It's about a toxic love affair, one partner sick, the other hooked, and Greg Graffin sings it with a sneer and a sigh. Gurewitz and Greg Hetson stack the guitars, Jay Bentley and Bobby Schayer keep it tight, and Andy Wallace co-produced and mixed it. Alongside "21st Century (Digital Boy)", it's the song that broke them on modern rock radio, and it's still a live staple. Through the '90s Graffin liked to slip Schayer's name into a line on stage.

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