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Californication (WORD)
Californication (PDF)
YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH THE VIDEO (except I've left out the instrumental)!
"Californication" is the Red Hot Chili Peppers' fourth single and sixth track from their 1999 seventh studio album, Californication. Released as a single in 2000, the song reached number 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, number 16 on the UK Singles Chart, and hit number 1 on both the US Mainstream Rock Tracks for 2 weeks and US Modern Rock Tracks for 1 week."Californication" has remained one of the band's most popular and most performed live songs appearing in almost every setlist since its live debut making it the band's third most performed song with over 500 performances.
The song is mainly about the dark side of Hollywood and the export of culture through the movie industry. The song begins "Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind's elation." Kiedis says in his book Scar Tissue that he got the inspiration for the line from hearing a woman on a New Zealand street ranting about "psychic spies in China". 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?"), The Beach Boys ("They're just another Good Vibration"), Star Wars ("and Alderaan's not far away") and Star Trek ("Space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement"). The phrase "First born Unicorn" refers to Dorothy Stratten, whose life was covered in the book The Killing of the Unicorn.