When the Peppers started working on the record last year, Kiedis was head over heels in love with his then-girlfriend and the world seemed rife with promise and possibility.
"I was madly in love with life and with music and everything," the singer said. "I was just connecting with the cosmos. There were times that my heart was so incredibly open to feeling all of the love in the universe that I felt like writing about it."
Kiedis' passion rubbed off on his bandmates, and they started creating sweeping, romantic songs that reverberated with joy and a renewed thirst for discovery. By the Way is like no other Chili Peppers album. The group has downplayed its trademark white boy punk-funk in favor of more textural and impressionistic sounds. Jangly rhythms duel with abrupt, pointed passages, wobbly guitar melodies mingle with sturdy basslines, and lush, stirring strings swim with plaintive arpeggios. The experimentation and composition are striking, enabling the band to add chaotic scribbles of noise to strummy pop parts without sounding forced. Many of the more creative passages were written by Frusciante.
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"Oddly enough, while we were working on the record I broke up with this person who was bringing all this love out in me," Kiedis revealed. "I still love her, but I had the beauty of the break-up pain to draw from."
