Give IT Away (Red Hot Chili Peppers Song) - Music and Composition

Music and Composition

"Give It Away" is performed in the time signature of 4/4 time. The track begins with a distinctively "dry" guitar tone that is similar in style to the rest of the record. Producer Rick Rubin had a considerable influence on the sound of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by removing much of the reverb and guitar layering that epitomized the band's previous album Mother's Milk. This caused the record to contain simpler and dryer guitar and bass chords that were not filtered through guitar effects—those that did, however, were made with vintage electronics from the 1960s and 70s. For "Give It Away", along with the rest of the album, Rubin sought to achieve a sense of atmosphere that was similar to 60s records that were made without commercialism or viability in mind and to downplay on "big" sounds: "What you hear is what you get—there's not a lot of trickery. A lot of people want the biggest sound, with walls of guitar and huge drums. But I don't think those things matter." The song follows a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure; when Kiedis begins singing, Frusciante jumps into a funk-oriented riff that is repeated throughout the verse while Flea plays a complex bass-line that makes use of virtually the entire fretboard.

During the chorus, Kiedis sings "Give it away, give it away, give it away now" repeatedly over a more rapid guitar riff before Frusciante provides, according to Steve Huey of Allmusic, a "sudden contrast to Kiedis' hyperactivity in the form of a languid solo pre-recorded and dubbed backwards over the rhythm track." The solo was recorded in one take because Frusciante had developed a preference towards speedy execution and a raw feeling; according to Flea, "We did very little fix-up stuff. John's philosophy was that he would only play a solo twice. He'd play it once, and if he didn't like it or we didn't like it, he'd play it again—completely different. And that was it." "Give It Away" also makes use of other instruments like the jaw's harp, which was played by band friend Pete Weiss. The song continues through several verses and choruses before reaching a bridge that introduces the outro, which consists of "a hard-rocking riff" that, according to Huey, strongly resembles the main riff from Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" from their 1971 record Master of Reality. Kiedis repeats "Give it away now" for several measures before the guitar, bass and drums drop out.