Stoakes’ Song of the Week
Well, this is week number two of Nu Metal November. And what a song we have for you today. This band were huge in the early noughties. They’re a band that sadly I so far haven’t seen live, but who knows what is around the corner. They have recently released a new single and are embarking on a US tour marking the 20th anniversary of the Make Yourself album. This is Incubus
Pardon Me was the lead single from ‘Make Yourself’, Incubus’ third album, released in 1999. The first Incubus song to get major radio airplay, it reached number three on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number seven on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. More than that, this song got me into Incubus when I first heard it when I was about 13!
The song describes a state of confusion, with allusions to spontaneous combustion. Lead singer Brandon Boyd says he was inspired to write the song after making a connection between images of spontaneous combustion in a magazine and “some turmoil in [his] life, both good and bad”, namely coming back from a tour to find out that his girlfriend of 7 years had been cheating on him, and that both his grandmother and a close friend of his had died. After seeing a picture in a magazine of a man who had spontaneously combusted, he related the man’s problems to his own and was inspired to write the lyric “Pardon me while I burst into flames” on his hand at that spot.
Musically, the song combines fast-paced, ambient verses with prominent turntable scratching, in place of a guitar solo, by DJ Kilmore and a hard-rocking mid-tempo chorus. However, the acoustic version of the song is also well regarded by fans, and helped the song become a radio hit. Initial radio reception was lukewarm, so Boyd and guitarist Mike Einziger decided to perform the song acoustically at several radio stations that had been playing the song, including KROQ-FM, and this acoustic version grabbed the attention of radio programmers and listeners. An acoustic version of the song was released on the When Incubus Attacks Volume 1 EP.
The album did very well worldwide, hitting 2 x Platinum in the USA and being certified Gold over here in the UK. Surprisingly, it only reached Number 83 in the UK album charts however in New Zealand it hit the number 8 spot.
What an album, now celebrating its 20th year, here’s hoping Incubus head over the pond and deliver some grungy nu metal sounds to us in the UK
