“Otherside” by Red Hot Chili Peppers

"Otherside" is the sound of Red Hot Chili Peppers looking back at the wreckage. It's from Californication, their seventh album, from 1999, and it went out as the record's third single. Anthony Kiedis wrote the words about Hillel Slovak, a former member of the band, whose heroin overdose killed him in 1988, and the song wrestles with the pull that addiction keeps on anyone who has escaped it.

All four members share the writing credit, and with Rick Rubin producing and Jim Scott engineering and mixing, Flea, John Frusciante, Kiedis and Chad Smith keep things lean and haunted, the guitar spare and ghostly over a low, steady pulse, with Greg Kurstin adding keyboards. Kiedis sounds more wounded than cocky, and the restraint is the hook.

It gave the band their fifth number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and held the top spot for 13 weeks in a row, one of the chart's longest reigns, while reaching number 14 on the Hot 100. Alternative stations wore it out: both 89X and The End ranked it as their top song of 2000.

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