Music and Lyrics
Cantrell, in an interview around the release of the album, said, "Our music's kind of about taking something ugly and making it beautiful." With the exceptions of "Grind", "Heaven Beside You", and "Over Now", the lyrics are all written by Staley. Staley said, "I just wrote down whatever was on my mind...so a lot of the lyrics are really loose. If you asked me to sing the lyrics to probably any one of them right now, I couldn't do it. I'm not sure what they are because they're still that fresh." Staley added, "For a long time I let problems and sour relationships rule over me instead of letting the water roll off my back...I thought it was cool that I could write such dark, depressing music. But then instead of being therapeutic, it was starting to drag on and keep hurting. This time I just felt, 'Fuck it. I can write good music, and if I feel easy and I feel like laughing, I can laugh.' There's no huge, deep message in any of the songs. It was just what was going on in my head right then. We had good times, and we had bad times. We recorded a few months of being human."
Of the album's four singles, "Grind", "Heaven Beside You", "Over Now", and "Again", three feature Cantrell on lead vocals. Cantrell also wrote the lyrics for the songs for which he sang lead vocals. Regarding "Grind", Cantrell said it was written at "pretty much at the height of publicity about canceled tours, heroin, amputations, everything, thus it was another 'FUCK YOU for saying something about my life' song." "Heaven Beside You" was written by Cantrell after the break-up of his girlfriend of seven years. He described the song as "Another attempt to reconcile the fact that my life and paths are tearing me apart from the person I love." Commenting on "Over Now", Cantrell said of the song: "A lot of deep shit in there, a big epic number. Plus you can get away with a hugely long tune near the end of a record."
Read more about this topic: Alice In Chains (album)
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