Take a Picture

The hook of Take a Picture isn't in the riff or the melody, but in that line we all remember: "Dad, what do you think about your son now?". The song was born from a real moment in the life of Richard Patrick, leader of Filter, when one drunken night led him to strip naked on a plane, wake up in a police van, and wonder what his father would think. The anecdote became a chorus that, years later, still resonates because Patrick gives it a different twist every time he performs it: sometimes it sounds like regret, other times irony, and on other occasions even defiance. What's curious is that the song isn't just a tale of excess, but a mirror reflecting how memory—or its absence—shapes identity. The lyrics work like a joke only he fully understands, yet the public repeats without knowing they're quoting a night he himself doesn't remember.

The recording of Take a Picture came at a pivotal moment for Filter. The album Title of Record was released in August 1999, after months of internal tensions: lineup changes and Patrick's decision to build his own studio to record. The result was an album that, against all odds, sold over 800,000 copies in less than two years and ended up certified platinum. The single was released in September 1999, but it was in January 2000 when it exploded on the radio, reaching position 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 3 in Canada. In the United States, it also topped the Dance Club Play chart and entered the top 5 of Modern Rock Tracks, something it didn't achieve on other charts like Adult Top 40 or Mainstream Top 40, where it only grazed the top 10 and top 20 respectively. Internationally, the track had an impact in New Zealand (number 8) and the United Kingdom (number 25), but its biggest success was in Australia, where it reached number 32. The video, directed by Dave Meyers, took the idea of disorientation to another level: five dreamlike scenes—a plane in flames, a shipwreck, a flooded house—where the band and model Jaime King appear as figures trapped in a dream they can't wake up from. The mix, handled by Ben Grosse, gave it that dirty, urgent edge that contrasts with the harshness of the lyrics, as if the music were drunk too.