Snow (Hey Oh)

This song is about cocaine and China White heroin, two of lead singer Anthony Kiedis' drugs of choice. Both are a white powdery substance, which looks like snow. The lyrics, "So white as snow... Privately divided by a world so undecided," refer to dividing the coke/heroin into lines, so as to deal them or snort them. The line, "The more I see, the less I know, the more I'd like to let it go," means the deeper Kiedis was immersed in these drugs, the less he knew what was going on, and the more he wanted to kick the habit.

Anthony Kiedis explained: "It's about the repeated failure to start your life anew and how difficult it can be to get rid of old ways of thinking, and destructive ideas we become so attached to."

Rick Rubin had already produced four other Red Hot Chili Peppers albums, so he had a pretty good idea of how the band worked. In a Rolling Stone interview, the producer explained how the Peppers often compose songs as a group during jam sessions, where they "create one main element, a verse or a chorus, and from that find pieces to make other parts of the song. Most bands write a lot of riffs, then see how they fit together to make a song. The Chili Peppers are more organic: creating pieces to go with other existing pieces."