10 Perfect Rock Songs Written At The Last Second

Ever since the '90s, no one has ever really complained that a Red Hot Chili Peppers record is too short. The band tend to take their jamming very seriously, and every project that has had Rick Rubin's name attached to it has given you more than your fair share of great moments. Even with the double album length of Blood Sugar Sex Magik though, one of the cornerstones of the record wasn't even in consideration when the band got into the studio.

Looking for some more material, Rick ended up going over to Anthony Kiedis' house and found a poem in one of his journals about him walking away from his vices. While Anthony felt it would be too personal to put into a Peppers' song, John Frusciante ended up putting a melody to the words for what would become Under the Bridge, telling the story of a broken junkie trying to find his way out of his own head and getting control of his life again.

In between the crazy songs on the record though, this was the closest thing to a ballad that the Peppers could have ever hoped for, giving them free reign to play with more styles down the road like the acoustic sounds of Road Trippin or the somber sounds of a track like Californication. Nirvana may have led most of the alternative scene into the '90s, but Under the Bridge is the real tipping point where the rock scene truly started to shift.