Song of the day 7/27/23 - Standing in line to see the show tonight, and there's a light on heavy glow...

 

 

"By The Way" - Red Hot Chili Peppers

from the album By The Way (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song comes from the alternative rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose seventh studio release Californication had spun off two top-40 crossover hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "Scar Tissue" and "Otherside". In the summer of 2002, the group, including lead singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Michael "Flea" Balzary, drummer Chad Smith, and the rehabilitated and reunited guitarist John Frusciante returned with their next album By The Way. The title track, written by the band and produced by Rick Rubin, was put out as the lead single. While the beginning of the song hearkens to the melodic rock they delved in on their last album, it quickly devolves into the funk-rock frenetic energy of their past, with Kiedis spitting out stream-of-consciousness verses lightly tied to being at a show (a Dani, who will arrive in their future work, appears here). The music video, inspired by a Mexican film, leads two members of the band on a wild car ride...

 "By The Way" returned the Peppers to the Hot 100 top-40 in August of 2002. On the radio, the song was massive on Alternative Rock radio, topping Billboard's airplay chart for fourteen weeks (only "Scar Tissue" did better with 16), as well as spending seven weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the single was an even bigger success on the singles chart, going to #1 in Italy, and making the top ten in the United Kingdom (#2), Canada (#2), Finland (#4), Poland (#4), Spain (#5), Greece (#5), Denmark (#6), Australia (#6), Norway (#6), Sweden (#7), Austria (#7), Ireland (#7), Hungary (#8), Switzerland (#8), Croatia (#9), and the Czech Republic (#10). It also reached the top-40 in the Netherlands (#12), New Zealand (#13), Germany (#22), France (#29), and Belgium (#31 Wallonia/#50 Flanders). The By The Way album, released in July of that year, took a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending over a year on the list and selling over two million copies.

 

The second single from By The Way was "The Zephyr Song", which was more reflective and "soft" enough for radio, going to #16 on Billboard's older-skewing Adult Top-40 chart, while spending five weeks at #1 on the rather new Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") Rock format, and peaking at #6 on Alternative Rock and #14 on the Mainstream Rock list. That was followed by going back to more funk rock on "Can't Stop", which topped Billboard's Alternative Rock chart for three weeks, and got to #15 on the Mainstream counterpart. Lastly, the guitar-heavy album cut "Dosed" rose to #13 on the Alternative Rock chart. Meanwhile, in Europe and Australia, the song "Universally Speaking" (which sported a music video "sequel" to "By The Way") was released as a fourth single, and reached the top-40 in Croatia (#6) and the UK (#27). 

The Red Hot Chili Peppers will be back to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's the Peppers performing the song live in Ireland in 2003...

Next up, on Jools Hollland's Later show in 2006....

And lastly, a year later at the Live Earth concert at Wembley in London...

Up tomorrow: Rap duo are using a mortar and pestle, perhaps.