Around The World

The band Red Hot Chili Peppers took an unexpected turn in their sound with Californication, their seventh studio album. John Frusciante’s guitar —who had returned to the lineup after years away— wove through some of the album’s catchiest riffs, but it was in Around the World where the band achieved something different: a song that moves forward like a moving train, with a bassline that seems to float above the rhythm and a chorus that repeats with a freshness that never fades. What makes this track unique isn’t just its structure, but how it was built. Frusciante composed the music at home, playing a borrowed Fender Jaguar, while Chad Smith kept time with the hi-hat. The curious thing is that the song has a deceptive *downbeat*: it sounds like a 4/4 measure, but the groove stretches it into something more organic, as if time itself moved to the rhythm of a train trip in no hurry to arrive.

The lyrics, written by Anthony Kiedis, don’t speak of places, but of sensations: his verses are chronicles of his own world travels, blending the thrill of being a musician with the harshness of living on the edge. Yet there’s a human twist in all of this. During the album’s recording, Flea’s daughter listened to the demos in the garage where they rehearsed. When Kiedis, stuck in a creative block, filled the verses with improvised *scat*, she was taken with that version. By the end, when the album was already finished, she asked them not to change it: the final chorus uses the original demo take, with those wordless sounds giving the song a playful, relaxed vibe. Recorded in Los Angeles with Rick Rubin at the helm, Around the World reached number 7 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks and number 16 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, cementing its place among the hits of Californication.