What is the name of the breakout song on the album that originated in a specific jam session in which Frusciante, Flea, and Smith were all playing together while Kiedis was at another part of the room watching?
Blood Sugar Sex Magik integrated the band's typical punk and funk style, but moved away from that with more melodically driven songs. Tracks like "The Righteous and the Wicked", "Suck My Kiss", "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", "Give it Away", and "Funky Monks" still incorporated the use of heavy metal guitar riffs, but they differed from Mother's Milk since they contained less distortion. Flea, who had centered his bass playing around the slapping technique, downplayed this, favoring more traditional and melodic bass lines. He even adopted a minimalist, "less is more" philosophy, saying, "I was trying to play simply on Blood Sugar Sex Magik because I had been playing too much prior to that, so I thought, 'I've really got to chill out and play half as many notes'. When you play less, it's more exciting—there's more room for everything. If I do play something busy, it stands out, instead of the bass being a constant onslaught of notes. Space is good." Kiedis thought that the album had expanded the Chili Peppers' musical horizons and served as a departure from their previous material. One of Blood Sugar Sex Magik's more melodic tracks, "Breaking the Girl", was written about Kiedis' constantly shifting relationships. He feared that he was following in his father's footsteps and simply becoming a womanizer, rather than establishing stable and long-term relationships: "As exciting and temporarily fulfilling as this constant influx of interesting and beautiful girls can be, at the end of the day, that shit is lonely and you're left with nothing." The track also featured a bridge in the middle, consisting of percussion instruments salvaged from a garbage dump.Although jams had always served as an integral aspect of song creation for the Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik saw songs containing more structure. One specific jam caused the breakout song on the album: Frusciante, Flea, and Smith were all playing together—with Kiedis at another part of the room watching—when "Flea started playing this insane bass line, and Chad cracked up and played along ... I always had fragments of song ideas or even specific isolated phrases in my mind. I (Kiedis) took the mic and belted out 'Give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now." The philosophy behind the lyrics came from a conversation that Kiedis had with Nina Hagen, regarding selflessness and how insignificant material possessions were in his life. It, thus, gave developed the song "Give It Away". He also reminisced about late Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak, composing "My Lovely Man" in his memory. Kiedis wrote "Sir Psycho Sexy" as an over-zealous and overly exaggerated version of himself; a figure that could get any woman, and do anything he pleased to them. "The Power of Equality" confronted topics concerning racial equality, prejudice, and sexism. Kiedis wrote "I Could Have Lied" to document the brief relationship he had with Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor.
Give It Away