Been a long, long time since I’ve covered a song from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. I wouldn’t say it’s a personal Desert Island pick of mine. I’m rarely ever in the mood to want to listen to it the whole way through. But the couple times I have, it’s usually been a good time. I’m rambling on about my experiences with that particular record, just because it’s the one where you can find the subject of today’s post. Really, back in 2005 or something, my sister was loaned the Chili Peppers’ 2003 Greatest Hits compilation by a friend of hers. ‘Suck My Kiss’ was on there. But I don’t think I was into the band’s funkier tracks back then, compared to the sing-songier ones that were usually played on TV too. But I grew up a few years, revisited the song through BSSM and immediately saw it as one of the best songs on there.

It’s all about the bass line. Honestly, I’ve sung along to that more times than reciting Anthony Kiedis’s words when I’ve listened to the song. Flea on bass, along with John Frusciante on guitar, play this mainly two-note riff during the verses in unison, with Flea’s bass more forward in the mix. The groove is tighter than anything and infectious as anything. Gets stuck in the head very easily. Chad Smith on drums brings it all together. You can sort of tell this must of been the result of some sort of jam between the three instrumentalists. Have you ever noticed how those bass-guitar stabs after the “Is she talking dirty” / “Is she gonna curtsy” lines are played three times in the first chorus, two times in the second, and then for once only in the the last one? Once I did, I thought it was very clever stuff. The type of move that I can only assume a group of musicians really in tune with each other would come to think of.

But if I have to do some kind of analysis of Anthony Kiedis’s lyrics, I don’t think it would go any more in-depth than what you reading this would think about them. Typically of that era of the band, he’s rap-singing, delivering words which may not align with one another or have any narrative structure, but are more to fit with the music surrounding him. And fair play to him, it’s a formula that hasn’t let him down. Especially on Blood Sugar…, a lot of the lyrics concern Kiedis’s desire to seek out a beautiful woman and have a good time with them. To put it lightly. And that’s what ‘Suck My Kiss’ boils down to, funnily enough. There’s lyrics like “Little Bo Peep coming for my stun gun”, “Do me like a banshee”, “Do me now, do me here, I do allow”. These are the words of a very horny man. Nothing wrong with that, I don’t think.