Not all song lyrics have to carry a deeper meaning; they can be funny, like several of the Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ tracks. For Flea, as he revealed on the This Little Light podcast, especially the early days of the band were full of jokes. He said:
“It’s funny, like how we thought we were funny when the Red Hot Chili Peppers first started. I don’t know if we were more obnoxious than funny, but we thought we were funny. We would do parodies of songs, but it was more like Beavis and Butt-Head. I always felt that was music, and maybe this relates to what you were just talking about; it’s hard, comedy can’t be taken seriously in music. As for us, they said, ‘They’re just immature brats.’ You know, fair enough.”
Some people called them ‘immature brats’ but comedians like Jon Daly and Cyrus Ghahremani understood the humor. Just before RHCP was set to play the Super Bowl XLVIII halftime show in 2014, they released a single called ‘Abracadabralifornia.’ It turned out to be a funny parody with an Anthony Kiedis impersonator, and even Chad Smith laughed over the song on Twitter.
So even if most might relate to heart-wrenching lyrics as opposed to parodies or lyrics like ‘Doo doo doo doo dingle zing a dong bone/ Ba-di ba-da ba-zumba crunga cong gone bad,’ Flea added that a good belly laugh more often than not has the same effect:
“But I feel like everybody wants Neil Young; they want the truth, they want the soul heart ripping open and the philosophical lesson and all that stuff, but for me, a good old laugh is as important, poignant, and as helpful to humanity as the most soul searching profound truth.”
You can listen to the episode below.
