Blood Sugar Sex Magik

chronology
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Studio album by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Publication ; (s)	September 24, 1991
Label (s)	Warner bros.
Format (s)	CD
Genre (s)	Funk metal / funk rock , crossover , alternative rock
Title (number)	17th
running time	73 min 55 s
occupation	Anthony Kiedis : vocals , percussion ; Flea : electric bass , background vocals , trumpet , percussion ; John Frusciante : guitars , backing vocals, percussion; Chad Smith : drums , percussion; Furthermore: Gail Frusciante (Frusciantes mother): Backing vocals; Brendan O'Brien: keyboard, sound engineering; Peter Weiss - Jew's Harp;
production	Rick Rubin;
Studio (s)	May-June 1991, The Mansion / Los Angeles, California

Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the fifth studio album by the American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers . It was released on September 24, 1991 on Warner Bros. Records .

The album brought the band the commercial breakthrough and was one of their most successful releases to date. It reached number 12 in the German charts and number 3 in the US charts. With Under the Bridge , the album also includes one of the band's greatest successes. The album was also received positively by the critics and was described as “the best album the Chilli Peppers will ever make”.

The album benefited from producer Rick Rubin . Rubin reduced the band's sound to its basic components, making the band sound clearer and more precise than on their previous albums.

The album is dedicated to Mike Watt .

Track list

All songs were written by Michael Balzary , John Frusciante , Anthony Kiedis, and Chad Smith , unless otherwise noted .

The Power of Equality - 4:03
If You Have to Ask - 3:37
Breaking the Girl - 4:55
Funky Monks - 5:23
Suck My Kiss - 3:37
I Could Have Song - 4:04
Mellowship Slinky in B Major - 4:00
The Righteous & The Wicked - 4:08
Give It Away - 4:43
Blood Sugar Sex Magik - 4:31
Under the Bridge - 4:24
Naked in the Rain - 4:26
Apache Rose Peacock - 4:42
The Greeting Song - 3:14
My Lovely Man - 4:39
Sir Psycho Sexy - 8:17
They're Red Hot - 1:12 (Johnson)

style

Lyrically, the album moves away from the purely entertaining lyrics, which often dominated the previous albums. In Blood Sugar Sex Magik , Kiedis processes experiences from his life in his texts. These include sexual experiences during tours (for example in Suck My Kiss , If You Have to Ask , Sir Psycho Sexy , Give It Away and Blood Sugar Sex Magik ). The texts also deal with Kiedi's drug addiction. In Under the Bridge describes the problems associated with addiction and his experiences with the drug scene.

Musically, the Red Hot Chili Peppers stayed true to their previous style in the field of funk and punk music, but in contrast to the previous album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik is described as more melodic. Titles like The Righteous and the Wicked , Suck My Kiss , Blood Sugar Sex Magik , Give it Away and Funky Monks stay true to the old line in terms of the chords, but a less distorted sound was recorded by Frusciante. In contrast, there are songs like Under the Bridge and Breaking the Girl , which are characterized by a quieter sound. Blood Sugar Sex Magik also has a faster pace than the previous albums .

background

Kiedis' lyrics reach a very personal level on the album. Under the Bridge and My Lovely Man deal with his own drug addiction and the related death of Hillel Slovak, who was the band's former guitarist and Kiedis' best friend. With Breaking the Girl and I Could Have Lied , he deals with relationship problems. Pieces like The Power of Equality or Give It Away , on the other hand, are more influenced by the naive, hippiesque philosophy that was already present on their predecessors. According to the band, the latter piece deals with the theory “ The more you give, the more you receive, so why not give it all away? ”( Red Hot Chili Peppers , German:“ The more you give, the more you get, so why shouldn't you give everything up? ”), Which Kiedis had developed through a meeting with Nina Hagen . There are also references to Bob Marley and River Phoenix in this song .

Musically, the album features the aforementioned Under the Bridge , Breaking the Girl (the band's first song in 6/8 time) and I Could Have Lied , the band's first quiet, acoustically dominated songs. The funk-oriented pieces typical of the band at the time, such as Give It Away , were still in the majority.

reception

Commercial win

The album marked the band's commercial breakthrough with top 10 placements in the USA and Switzerland and top 25 placements in Germany, Austria and the UK.

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
year	title	DE	AT	CH	UK	US	Remarks
1991	Blood Sugar Sex Magik	DE12 (48 weeks) DE	AT17 (16 weeks) AT	CH10 (39 weeks) CH	UK25 (121 weeks) UK	US3 (97 weeks) US	First published: September 20, 1991 Sales: +15,200,000

Outcouplings

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
year	Title album	DE	AT	CH	UK	US	Remarks
1991	Give It Away Blood Sugar Sex Magik	-	-	-	UK9 (5 weeks) UK	US73 (15 weeks) US	First published: September 1991 Sales: + 200,000
1992	Under the Bridge Blood Sugar Sex Magik	DE11 (25 weeks) DE	-	-	UK13 (18 weeks) UK	US2 (26 weeks) US	First published: March 10, 1992 Sales: + 2,185,000
	Breaking the Girl Blood Sugar Sex Magik	-	-	-	UK41 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: July 30, 1992
	Suck My Kiss Blood Sugar Sex Magik	-	-	-	-	-	First publication: 1992
1993	If You Have to Ask Blood Sugar Sex Magik	-	-	-	-	-	First published: 1993

Give it away

Give It Away was the band's first song to reach # 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks. The music video was shot by Stéphane Sednaoui . In an episode of The Simpsons , the band appears and plays the song, but is also played around in allusion to the episode on the Ed Sullivan Show in which Sullivan asked Doors singer Jim Morrison to defuse the lyrics of Light My Fire a text change requested

Public Enemy modified the chorus of the song for their song Give It Up , in which they exchanged a word and from “Give it away, give it away, give it away now” “Give it up, give it up, give it up yo “Did. In 1994 both bands performed at the Superbang Festival in Düren , where Flavor Flav announced the headliner Red Hot Chili Peppers and rapped the original lyrics.

Breaking the girl

The ballad Breaking the Girl took respectable places in the Billboard charts: The song came in at number 15 in the mainstream rock tracks, and at number 19 in the modern rock tracks. Sednaoui also shot this video. In 2008 singer Anna Nalick released an acoustic cover version of the song on her Shine EP .

Under the bridge

Under the Bridge not only took second place on the Billboard Hot 100 , it also came in second for mainstream rock tracks and sixth for modern rock tracks. The video was made by Gus van Sant . The song is partly inspired by the Eagles ' song Desperado and is based on a very personal poem that Kiedis did not originally write for the band. It referred to the place where Kiedis' once bought his drugs. The opening line of the text ("Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner") refers not only to the loss of his friend Slovak, but also to the fact that Kiedis felt marginalized by the growing friendship between Frusciante and Flea. Kiedis described the song as “ this really sad thing, sort of sensitive ” ( Anthony Kiedis , German: “this really sad thing, somehow sensitive”). The All Music Guide states that the song “ has become an integral part of the 1990s alterna-landscape ” ( Amy Hanson , German: “has become an integral part of the alternative landscape of the 1990s”).

In 1998 the song was covered by the girl group All Saints , but the content was changed in such a way that it no longer contained drug references and the piece passed as a love song. This version was a double A single with Lady Marmalade at number one in the British singles charts .

Suck my kiss

Suck My Kiss was ranked 15th on Billboard Modern Rock Tracks. According to the All Music Guide, the text of the piece, riddled with sexual innuendos, gave the album the Parental Advisory sticker, “ that the Peppers' wore as a badge of honor ” ( Amy Hanson , German: “ that the Peppers wore like a badge of honor ”) .

If you have to ask

Blood Sugar Sex Magik's fifth and final single missed a chart position.

Critical appraisal

The album was received very positively by music critics .

Laut.de awards the highest possible score of 5 stars and also lists the album as a “milestone that changed music history.” Critic Eberhard Dobler describes Blood Sugar Sex Magik as “one of the moments in rock history where everyone involved at the right time doing everything right in the right place. ”The new members of the band, guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith, received special praise.

The Allmusic Guide also gave it the highest rating of five stars and described Blood Sugar Sex Magik as "probably the best album the Chili Peppers will ever make."

The album also received five out of five points from Tyler Fisher, critic at sputnikmusic.com. He calls the album "a pure mixture of energy, emotions and testosterone from four men." In his opinion, "almost every track on the album is excellent" and the album itself is a "must have for the 90s."

About.com gives the album 4.5 out of five stars. Tim Grierson, who was responsible for the criticism, writes about the album that the musical style has a very wide range and the band can please everyone.

The music magazine Rolling Stone rated the album four out of five stars. Critic Tom Moon says Blood Sugar Sex Magik brings new dimensions to music.

The BBC does not give a rating, but still praises the album in high tones. The critic Charis Blyth writes about the album that no other band could bring out an album like this.

Awards

Give It Away received a 1992 Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance With Vocal. Van Sant's video of Under the Bridge won three MTV Video Music Awards in the same year : It received the Viewers' Choice Award, as well as awards for Breakthrough Video and for Best Art Direction. In addition, the album was awarded 310th place in the Rolling Stones “Greatest Albums of All Time”.

literature

Joel McIver: Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Making of Blood Sugar Sex Magik (= Vinyl Frontier ). Unanimous Ltd., London 2005, ISBN 1-903318-79-3 .

Web links

Blood Sugar Sex Magik on MusicBrainz

Individual evidence

↑ Review of Greatest Hits on bbc.co.uk (English)

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Steve Huey: Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Retrieved August 18, 2010 .

↑ Tom Moon: Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers | Rolling Stone Music | Music Reviews. Retrieved August 18, 2010 .

↑ David Fricke: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Naked Truth. ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 102 kB) In: Rolling Stone , No. 633. From: rhcpfrance.com (English), accessed on March 25, 2012 @1@ 2

↑ Breaking the Girl on songfacts.com (English)

↑ ^a ^b ^c Give It Away on songfacts.com (English)

↑ ^a ^b Chart sources, albums: DE AT CH UK US

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Red Hot Chili Peppers - Billboard Singles in the All Music Guide (English)

↑ ^a ^b Videography: Stephane Sednaoui ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on popzoot.tv @1@ 2

↑ Give It Up ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on PublicEnemy.com (English) @1@ 2