Gotta Get Away

This song deals with paranoia and self loathing, with lead singer Dexter Holland singing about how he never feels safe and can't relax. In Offspring's Greatest Hits bonus DVD, he explains that it was the last song he wrote for the album, and he was feeling a lot of pressure to meet the deadline. He channeled all that anxiety into the song.

The song is based on a track called "Cogs" that the band recorded when they were known as Manic Subsidal.

This was the third promotional single from the Smash album, following "Come Out And Play" and "Self Esteem (no single were released commercially in the US to encourage fans to buy the album). The album was issued on April 8, 1994, the same day Kurt Cobain was found dead. "Come Out And Play" made headway that summer, and "Self Esteen" and "Gotta Get Away" earned most of their airplay late in 1994 and in early 1995. The album was released on an indie label specializing in punk: Epitaph Records. It went on to sell over 6 million copies in the US, becoming the best-selling independent album of all time. (The 2003 Evanescence album Fallen sold a lot more and was issued on the independent label Wind-up Records, but it was distributed by BMG. Epitaph did their own distribution, making them more truly independent.) Smash also made the owner of Epitaph, Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, quite rich, which caused some tension when the band didn't feel they were getting their share. They jumped ship to Columbia Records, where they released their next album, Ixnay On The Hombre, in 1997.