10 Best Songs Where Hard Rock Bands Went Acoustic
6. I Could Have Lied - Red Hot Chili Peppers
If you were there for the first incarnation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there was no way that you needed to worry about them getting all sentimental. These felt like the frat bros who were meant to just create a funky fresh time onstage and occasionally melt your face off, but something changed around the Mother's Milk era, with Knock Me Down being the first deep song about the death of their guitarist Hillel Slovak. Now that they had a firm grip on the heavy stuff, I Could Have Lied is the kind of heartbreak song that Anthony Kiedis had seemed to be wanting to write for a while.
Being smitten by Sinead O'Connor when hanging out with her in between tours, this song is all about how their relationship fell through, with Anthony having to commit to the Peppers and Sinead focusing on her own musical career. Since the track right before this was Suck My Kiss, hearing them go to a broken acoustic guitar and Anthony's vocal at the start is like night and day, with John Frusciante's solo practically capturing that emotion in just a few minutes.
This was just the jumping on point for the Peppers though, being just a few more tracks later when Anthony deals with his drug problems on Under the Bridge. The musical landscape was already shifting around this time, but it takes a special kind of band to tap into this kind of pain and then jump around the stage with socks over their d*cks at the end of the night.