Greatest Hits (Red Hot Chili Peppers album)

Greatest Hits is the second greatest hits album and second compilation album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on Nov. 18, 2003, by Warner Bros. Records. Aside from their cover of "Higher Ground", all songs on the album are from the band's tenure on Warner Bros. Records from 1991 to 2002, in addition to two newly recorded songs.
Greatest Hits was released along with a separately sold DVD containing most of their music videos from the same time period.
The album was released with Copy Control protection system in some European markets, but not in the United States.
While their first hits compilation album What Hits!? encompasses material from their 1984 debut to 1989's Mother's Milk, this collection of songs takes off from that point, including material from their 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik up through their 2002 album By the Way. It was during this period of their career that the band became a major commercial force in the music industry. Therefore, this compilation includes the majority of hit singles released since their breakthrough cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground".
"My Friends" is the only track included from the 1995 album, One Hot Minute. However, the music video for "Aeroplane" is featured on the DVD version of the compilation. "Warped", the lead single from One Hot Minute, is also absent as both a song and music video on the DVD.
Of the band's eight U.S. number-one singles on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart up to that point, only one, "Can't Stop", from their 2002 album By the Way, was excluded, though the music video was featured on the DVD.
Also absent were top-10 hits "Around the World," from their 1999 album Californication and "The Zephyr Song" from By the Way although the DVD contained the music videos for the songs. Conversely, "Breaking the Girl" was not included on the DVD, as well as "Parallel Universe," the latter of which never had a music video released.
To date, Greatest Hits has outsold six of the band's 13 studio albums, including Mother's Milk and I'm with You, making it the band's fifth-highest-selling release.
In 2011, drummer Chad Smith discussed the recording sessions for Greatest Hits, mentioning that the band had recorded 16 songs and wished to release an entirely new album just for this material after a brief tour; however, guitarist John Frusciante was heavily against this idea at the time, claiming that his playing style had evolved and changed too much, as had his musical influences. Smith said there was an entire Red Hot Chili Peppers album out there that nobody would ever hear.
Aside from the two new tracks on the album ("Fortune Faded" and "Save the Population”), only two other studio tracks from these sessions have been officially released. "Bicycle Song" and "Runaway" appeared as bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of By the Way when it was released on iTunes in 2006 and can now be found on many other digital music stores. Live versions of several other songs have also been released. "Rolling Sly Stone" and "Leverage Of Space" were included on the Live in Hyde Park album in 2004 and "Mini-Epic (Kill for Your Country)" was released as an "official" bootleg in 2015. A studio in-house CD-R was leaked in 2014 which contained two instrumental tracks from these sessions, called "Starlight" and "50/Fifty", and three different takes of "Runaway". The names of the remaining songs are either unknown or unconfirmed.
On February 7, 2014, in an interview with fans on Reddit, Smith claimed that the band hoped to one day release a box set including all unreleased material from the recording sessions for Greatest Hits.
Greatest Hits and Videos was also released with the tracks above, including a DVD (available as Greatest Videos) containing the following music videos:
The album has made its return to the album charts at various times over the years since its release in 2023. Twenty-two years after its release in March 2025, Greatest Hits returned to the albums charts yet again. It landed at #131 on the Billboard 200 charts giving the album its highest chart position since 2004. It also appeared at #17 on the Top Alternative Albums chart, #20 on the Top Rock Albums chart and at #26 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart. In total since the album's release, it has spent a total of 315 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, 223 weeks on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart, 222 weeks on the Top Rock Albums chart and 213 on the Top Alternative Albums chart.