“Date Rape” by Sublime

"Date Rape" goes back to Sublime's earliest records: the band cut it for 40 Oz. to Freedom, their 1992 debut album, and first issued it as a single in 1991. It took four more years and one radio station to make it a hit. When KROQ in Los Angeles started slipping it into rotation, it quickly became one of the station's most requested songs, and it showed up again on the 1995 EP Living in a Boring Nation.

Bradley Nowell wrote it as a ska punk story song: a man date rapes a woman, is convicted, and is then raped himself in prison. Nowell said the idea came from a party where a guest made a crass remark about date rape that upset everyone else in the room, while he laughed and turned it into a joke song.

For all its popularity, it barely made that first CD. Nowell and his bandmates counted it among their worst songs and were often reluctant to play it live, even with fans shouting for it.

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