“Dosed” by Red Hot Chili Peppers

"Dosed" drifts in from By the Way, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 2002 album, and it's the band at its gentlest. Written by Flea, John Frusciante, Anthony Kiedis and Chad Smith, it's a ballad that stretches past five minutes, and the texture is the whole story: Frusciante and Flea stack up four guitars, each one playing a different riff, so the song shimmers like heat off a summer road. Kiedis and Frusciante harmonize on the chorus, the song keeps circling back to its opening verse as it moves through its stages, and guitar solos slip in between.

It went out as a radio single only in the United States and Canada, reaching number 13 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in 2003. Oddly, the band never played it live with Frusciante; he only teased it once, in Copenhagen in 2006, and Josh Klinghoffer did the same years later.

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