Robbed hit of the week 10/23/23 - Red Hot Chili Peppers' "The Zephyr Song"...

 

 

"The Zephyr Song" - Red Hot Chili Peppers

from the album By The Way (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #49 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, who landed their fifth top-40 hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the summer of 2002 with the lead single and title track from their album By The Way. Their following release would be "The Zephyr Song", written by the group and produced by Rick Rubin. The lyrics are a stream of consciousness like many from them, but it's a more positive and less drug-infused one. The production from Rubin is the usual trippy lite-funk, but the chorus is way more uplifting that I'm used to hearing from the Peppers. The music video has no story but rather a flow of images to stimulate the brain...

 

 While "The Zephyr Song" did decently on rock radio, topping the nascent Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") Rock chart for five weeks, peaking at #6 on the Alternative Rock list, and #14 on the Mainstream Rock format, lack of pop radio interest had it stall right above the halfway mark on the Hot 100 in November of 2002. It did make it to #17 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40, however. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Croatia (#2) and New Zealand (#9) and almost made it in the United Kingdom and Canada (#11), and made the top-40 in Italy (#20), Ireland (#22), and Australia (#21). 

 

The band's next stop from By The Way was 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). 

 

(6/10)

 

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Here's the band performing the song at Slane Castle in Ireland in 2003...