"Parallel Universe" is a promotional single by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and second track from their 1999 album, Californication. Although it never was released as a tangible CD single, it charted on the US Modern Rock Tracks at number 37 during the week of March 24, 2001, and appeared on Greatest Hits.
Although being one of the album's loudest songs in terms of distortion, it does not contain any of the Chili's signature funk-orientated bass lines which they had been primarily known for in the past. Anthony Kiedis' vocals are subdued during the verses, reflecting an approach towards melodic balladry, whilst similarly the song lyrically tackles darker, more introspective themes than those that the band generally had a reputation for.
Despite only being a promotional single, "Parallel Universe" remains a live favorite in the band's setlists and has been performed over 230 times since its release making it one of the band's most performed songs since its first performance in 1998. No music video was made for the single.
Famous quotes containing the words parallel and/or universe:
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“All the universe over, there is but one thing, this old Two- Face, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any proposition may be affirmed or denied.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)