“Stripsearch” by Faith No More

Faith No More built "Stripsearch", from their sixth album, Album of the Year (1997), out of a song guitarist Jon Hudson had sketched in bare-bones MIDI, which is why it leans so hard on electronics. The loop at the top is what flipped it: without it, the story goes, the track leaned toward Queensrÿche; with it, it drifted toward Portishead, darker and barely a rock band at all. Mike Patton sings it, and Billy Gould co-produced it with Roli Mosimann, who mixed it.

It was lined up as a single for November 1997, with promo CDs out and radio on board, but London Recordings scrapped the release and put out the band's 1995 cover of the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke" instead. Philipp Stölzl shot the video in Berlin from a screenplay by Gould.

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