“Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground

"Sex and Candy" came off Marcy Playground's self-titled debut album in 1997, and it's post-grunge dosed with psychedelic haze, a slow, sleepy sway that sounds like it's been lounging on a shag rug since the disco era. John Wozniak wrote it after a woman told him a room smelled of sex and candy, and he filled it with abstract, hippie-slang imagery that critics have read as a love song, as sensual, or as pure nonsense. Wozniak once called it an unusual love song, then later admitted he didn't know what it meant.

Wozniak sings and plays both acoustic and electric guitar, and he produced it himself; Jared Kotler handles bass and drums. Kenny Gioia mixed it with the band and engineered alongside Jim Sabella, and the sound is dry and close, all murmur and slouch. Plenty of critics heard Nirvana in it.

It hit radio in September 1997 and camped out at number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks for a then-record 15 weeks, reaching 8 on the Hot 100 and 2 in Canada. It remains the band's only hit. Jamie Caliri's video, with Wozniak's head sticking out of a hole in a mountain and a spider crawling around, has drawn Freudian readings and comparisons to Salvador Dalí, and Maroon 5 and Slothrust have both covered the song.

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