10 Perfect Follow Ups To Masterpiece Albums

The late ‘90s marks a pretty big turning point for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. After spending the last few years in the midst of drug relapsing and one of their more controversial albums with One Hot Minute, getting John Frusciante back in the band made for some of their best music on Californication, feeling much more road tested and world wise this time around. If Californication was the sound of healing though, By the Way was just them celebrating making music together.

Then again, that wasn’t really the plan at first. When the band was starting to put together the demos for this album, their original idea was to make lush pretty songs that were evened out by some of the most straight ahead punk centric material that they could think of. When they actually heard the final mix of these songs, the pretty songs ended up rising to the top a lot more, making for the most serene set of songs in the Peppers’ catalog.

Granted, things do fly off the rails a lot more often on songs like the title track, but the real meat of the album is about the band having a good time in the studio, featuring songs that could easily have been Beach Boys cuts on songs like Universally Speaking and Midnight. Since Frusciante was listening to a lot of prog music at the time, you can also hear them reaching for new influences all the time, bringing in the keyboards on songs to add an extra color to everything. By the Way might seem like more of a companion piece to Californication, but if you’re looking for just raw fun out of the Peppers, this should be the first place you go.