Release and Reception
The first single off Blood Sugar Sex Magik was "Give It Away", which reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in late 1991. The band did not foresee "Under the Bridge" being as successful, but understood the potential commercial viability. Warner Bros. Records sent representatives to a Chili Peppers concert to determine which song should be the next single. When Frusciante began playing "Under the Bridge", Kiedis missed his cue and the entire audience began singing the song instead. Kiedis was initially "mortified that I had fucked up in front of Warner's people I apologized for fucking up but they said 'Fucking up? Are you kidding me? When every single kid at the show sings a song, that's our next single'." "Under the Bridge" became the album's second single in March 1992; upon release, journalist Jeff Apter noted that it "was the bona fide, across-all-formats radio hit that the band had been working towards for seven years." It spent twenty-six cumulative weeks on the United States Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number two. The single has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Critical response to "Under the Bridge" was universally positive. Tom Moon of Rolling Stone felt the song "revealed new dimensions. The rhythm section displays a growing curiosity about studio texture and nuance". David Fricke of Rolling Stone said "Under the Bridge" is a "stark and uncommonly pensive ballad", commenting that the song "drop-kicked the band into the Top 10". Philip Booth of The Tampa Tribune believed the single was "undulating omnipresent" not only in the alternative rock genre, but pop music as a whole. Ben DiPietro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch praised the record as a whole, but was most impressed by Chili Peppers' shift from exclusive hard rock to adding more moderately paced tracks: "there's still plenty of sonic funk to bang heads to, but the best tracks are the slower ones such as 'Under the Bridge'". Amy Hanson of Allmusic noted that the song has "become an integral part of the 1990s alterna-landscape, and remains one of the purest diamonds that sparkle amongst the rough-hewn and rich funk chasms that dominate the Peppers' own oeuvre". She went on to praise "Under the Bridge" for being a "poignant sentiment that is self evident among the simple guitar which cradles the introductory verse, and the sense of fragility that is only doubled by the still down-tempo choral crescendo".
"Under the Bridge" has been included in many publications' "Best of ..." lists. In 2002, Kerrang! placed the song at number six on their list of the "100 Greatest Singles of All Time". Q ranked the song number 180 on their compilation of the "1001 Best Songs, Ever". Life included "Under the Bridge" in the compilation "40 Years of Rock & Roll, 5 Songs Per Year 1952–1991", with the year being 1991. Pause and Play included the song in their unordered list of the "10 Songs of the 90's"; and the song ranked fifteenth in VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 90s". Rolling Stone and MTV compiled a list of the "100 Greatest Pop Songs Since The Beatles" in 2000, with "Under the Bridge" coming in fifty-fourth. "Under the Bridge" was also ranked #98 in the list of Rolling Stone "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".
Read more about this topic: Under The Bridge
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)