Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication

By: Fabian Kolly

This song from he red hot chili peppers where published in her album "Californication", it speaks about the globalization of the western civilization. The song is mainly about the dark side of Hollywood. The song opens to "Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind's elation.". The track also makes references to topics such as pornography ("hardcore soft porn") and plastic surgery ("pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging") and even some pop culture references including Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain and David Bowie ("Cobain, can you hear the spheres singing songs off Station to Station?").

In Kiedis's book Scar Tissue he reveals that the band had enormous difficulty in putting the song together. Kiedis had written the lyrics, which he felt were some of the best he had ever written, but the band could not decide how the song should sound musically. As they struggled with the song it seemed like they would not be able to finish it in time to include it on the album, until one day Frusciante walked into the studio and exclaimed that he had "figured it out". He played the song as he visualised it, and it went from being a song that could have been an afterthought, to become one of their most famous hits.

Psychic spies from China

Try to steal your mind's elation

Little girls from Sweden

Dream of silver screen quotations

And if you want these kind of dreams

It's Californication

It's the edge of the world

And all of western civilization

The sun may rise in the East

At least it settles in the final location

It's understood that Hollywood

sells Californication

Pay your surgeon very well

To break the spell of aging

Celebrity skin is this your chin

Or is that war your waging

Chorus

First born unicorn

Hard core soft porn

Dream of Californication

Dream of Californication

Marry me girl be my fairy to the world

Be my very own constellation

A teenage bride with a baby inside

Getting high on information

And buy me a star on the boulevard

It's Californication

Space may be the final frontier

But it's made in a Hollywood basement

Cobain can you hear the spheres

Singing songs off station to station

And Alderaan's not far away

It's Californication

Born and raised by those who praise

Control of population everybody's been there and

I don't mean on vacation

Chorus

Destruction leads to a very rough road

But it also breeds creation

And earthquakes are to a girl's guitar

They're just another good vibration

And tidal waves couldn't save the world

From Californication

Pay your surgeon very well

To break the spell of aging

Sicker than the rest

There is no test

But this is what you're craving

Chorus