Control

This song is about a very intense love/hate relationship Puddle Of Mudd lead singer Wes Scantlin had with an ex-girlfriend. He couldn't control her and she couldn't control him, which made it very combustible. "She would do crazy things that would hurt me," he told MTV. "There was no way I could control her, but at the same time the intimate part of the relationship was totally off the hook. I was kind of blind to the whole situation I was in because the sex was so great. Then one day I woke up and just went, 'Man, I can't do this anymore, and you're just not the one for me, so you gotta go. Bye-bye.'"

A line you're likely to remember from this song is "I love the way you smack my ass." Wes Scantlin spent a lot of time with strippers and had a girlfriend who worked at a Kansas City club called Bazooka's Showgirls. She would tell her customers, "I love the way you smack my ass," which was kind of her catch phrase, so Scantlin put it into the song.

"Control" was Puddle Of Mudd's first single. It was released on Fred Durst's label, Flawless Records. The band was broken up in 1999 when Wes Scantlin threw a proverbial Hail Mary by sneaking backstage at Limp Bizkit's Kansas City tour stop and delivering a demo tape to Durst's bodyguard. Scantlin was in the process of relocating to New Orleans when he got word that Durst was interested. Unfortunately, his bandmates were frozen out of the deal, so Flawless Records teamed Scantlin with new musicians who became Puddle Of Mudd.