2008Released
3:33

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Gives You Hell. By Songfacts®.

The first single from The All-American Rejects third album, frontman Tyson Ritter said in a track-by-track interview before the album was released that the song was about a single person, but he later explained to MTV News: "It's kind of this tongue-in-cheek way of looking at someone you hate, whether it's your mom, for some reason, or it's your teacher at school, or it's your boss at work. It's just someone who makes you struggle, and it's giving them the finger."

Ritter and Rejects guitarist Nick Wheeler write all of their songs, and when they wrote this one, they each had a steady girlfriend, so the lyrics were not personal. The song became a huge hit, but Tyson went into a downward spiral - both he and Nick lost their girlfriends and it was a while before they were productive again. Talking about getting it together to write for their next album, Kids In The Street, Wheeler told us: "Ty was still coming down off the whole 'Gives You Hell' ride, and we both moved to Los Angeles. He got mixed in with the bad crowd and kind of thought he was on top of the world - thought he was bulletproof and all that."
Their song "Beekeeper's Daughter" finds Ritter reflecting on this time when he was a jackass but didn't care.

This song made #1 on the US Pop charts, and was their biggest hit on the Hot 100, but the band wasn't so sure about it when they recorded it. Nick Wheeler told us: "We recorded it with (producer) Eric Valentine. The whole time, we were like, What is this? Like, Is this us? Why am I having these mixed feelings about this song? It turned out to be our first #1 song, so I'm glad we ended up putting it on the record."

Ritter explained the song's promo to MTV News: "The video basically pits one neighbor against another terrible neighbor, who lives on a completely opposite schedule. He's not on the grid - he's not on, like the song says, 'a 9-to-5 pace.' And this guy's living the cookie-cutter life, with his white picket fence, and his wife who brings him lemonade when he's washing the car. So it's kind of like the clash of those worlds; only at the end, there's kind of a twist, where the two worlds kind of flip-flop."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Gives You Hell.
EKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
100BPM

Album

The album Gives You Hell is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Gives You Hell.
Interscope
© 2009 DGC/Interscope Records
℗ 2009 DGC/Interscope Records

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5.8MArtists
73.6MSongs
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