Otherside
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Otherside is a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Released in 2000, it was the third single from the album Californication, and is a song that confronts the battles ex-junkies have with their demons on the background of friends lost to hard drug abuse. The video was created by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris in a black-and-white Gothic style similar to Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, all influenced by German Expressionist art.
The effect is wonderfully surreal. A cartoonish story line is juxtaposed upon the song, a young man's jittery dream sequence. The band members appear in unusual locations and with strange-looking instruments: Anthony Kiedis with short, platinum hair in a castle tower, John Frusciante plays a rope as if a guitar, Flea is hanging on telephone wires and playing them as if they were a bass, and Chad Smith is up on a medieval clock tower that serves as his drum kit.
Jonathan Dayton: "We did look at Caligari, and we looked at a lot of German Expressionist film. But it was also very important to avoid 'Caligari.' It was both inspiration and something to work around, because it has such a strong, specific style, and there have been other videos that have completely ripped it off."
Valerie Faris: "We didn't look at 'Calagari' all that much, really. We did, but then we just left it. We did look at a lot of the works of the futurist artists from the '30s, and the illustrations of the surrealists and from cubism. We were inspired more by paintings than by films…"
The word "otherside" can be a reference to beyond death, but it is also often applied to living a new, clean lifestyle after long-term drug abuse. People who have been through the drugs and rehab cycle, relate very strongly to 'Otherside'. As a dead friend, likely Hillel Slovak, speaks to him "through a photograph", Anthony knows that he "can never go back"… but it's just not that simple. The song builds to a dramatic climax, at which point Anthony shouts about his addictions, "It's not my friend / I tear it down and I tear it down / And then it's born again", vividly painting the epic battle that staying clean really is.
ACNielsen's Broadcast Data System (BDS) compiled a list of 40 most-played music videos of 2000, based on monitored data from MTV, VH-1, BET and CMT. The video for "Otherside" came in at #1.
Track list
CD single (2000)- "Otherside (Album)" – 4:16
- "How Strong (Unreleased)" – 4:43
- "Road Trippin' (Without Strings)" – 3:25
- "Otherside (Music Video)"
- "Otherside (Album)" – 4:16
- "My Lovely Man (Live)" – 5:18
- "Around The World (Music Video)"
- "Otherside (Album)"
- "How Strong (Unreleased)"
- "My Lovely Man (Live)"
- "Road Trippin' (Without Strings)"
- "Scar Tissue (Music Video)"
- "Around The World (Music Video)"
- "Otherside (Album)"
- "How Strong (Unreleased)"
- "My Lovely Man (Live)"
- "Road Trippin' (Without Strings)"
- "Otherside (Album)"
- "How Strong (Unreleased)"
- "Otherside (Album)"
- "How Strong (Unreleased)"
Sample clip
- [Otherside] ([file info])
- *
- * Problems listening to the file? See [Media helpmedia help].
See also
List of songs about suicide
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