Soul to Squeeze is a song that I have been vibing to for the past week. The song was released on July 20, 1993 by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It was supposed to actually be released on their fifth studio album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991), but instead, it was put on the soundtrack of the movie Coneheads. It was later added to their Greatest Hits album. Soul to Squeeze at its peak reached 22 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
This song, like many other Chilli Peppers songs, goes into depth with the lead singer, Anthony Kiedis, personal struggles with addiction, and the hope that he felt while trying to quit and live a sober life. Addiction is something that he has really struggled with since he was younger growing up in a drug-riddled community. One lyric said, " It got me by my soul to squeeze" which is a beautiful metaphor because it reminds me of squeezing lemons or some other kind of fruit. You cant actually squeeze a soul, so he uses this phrase to make the listener think of something tangible. He also talks about love and death with his love, and the death of all of the trees around him connecting himself with nature that he wants to be a part of. The hook of the song, "Where I go, I just don't know," is a feeling of not having a plan and he's going to take things slow in life, whatever happens, happens, and he does know that he's going to give the world some of his good time while he's alive. The song then says "Today love smiled on me, he took away my pain." His pain is his addiction to heroin, he tried to use that drug to take away his pain but only made more of it. There's an awesome guitar solo in the middle of the song which helps bridge into the next verse. In a later part of the song "I might end up somewhere in Mexico," When Anthony was struggling to stop his addiction he would go down to Mexico and have some kind of last hurrah with the drug before eventually relapsing later on. Altogether this is a song about addiction, but there is always hope of overcoming it on the horizon while also describing the beauty of the Universe itself.
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