"Pool Shark" is widely known as Sublime lead singer Bradley Nowell's "suicide note." It talks of his struggle with heroin, and how "One day (he's) gonna lose the war." Nowell died of a heroin overdose in 1996.
While this song does make specific references to heroin ("Now I've got the needle, and I can shake"), Nowell wrote it about a specific girl. In a Songfacts interview with Sublime bass player Eric Wilson, he explained that the "Pool Shark" was Nowell's girlfriend at the time. "She was really good at pool - it turns out she was hanging out with some guys and she got good at pool," he said. "They broke up shortly after that, but that's what he wrote that about."
The song is part of the second Sublime album, Robbin' The Hood, where it appears twice: first as a 57-second punk rampage, then as a 1:32 mellow acoustic track. The album was a low-budget production released independently by the band. They smoothed out their sound on their next album, Sublime, which was released on a major label (MCA) and included several ska-flavored hits, including "What I Got" and "Wrong Way." By the time the album was released, Brad Nowell was dead and the band was dissolved. Those songs all got airplay even without a band to perform them.
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