They're a band that's so iconic, it's become trendy to hate them. Just like the Beatles, f***ing come at me. I've had it up to here with Becky's and Sara's who don't think The Beatles are any good.
I digress.
Whether you like them or not, they're objectively fantastic musicians, and Keidis has rockstar swagger from a bygone era.
I totally disagree with anybody who says it all sounds the same. They've had a tremendous amount of progression over the years without (mostly) jumping the shark and sounding like a different band. It's a nice middle ground that's hard to achieve.
Sure, I'll concede that there's a vibe. 90% of my RHCP listening is in warm weather. That's fine. Every band has a character. Saying RHCP should lay off the summer vibe is like saying The Black Dahlia Murder should lay off murder. That's what the f***ing band is.
It also must be said that RHCP's music is generally not my genre. I'm a metalhead. You've got to be pretty decent to reside in my non-metal catalogue and all the bands that do are all-time greats.
I don't get The Beatles hate. It's so dumb. Contrarianism. Every year I see more and more garbage on FaceBook and Instagram trying to retcon music history.
It's funny you associate RHCP with summer and being chill. I'd say that's definitely the By The Way to present of their career aka when they've already been icons.
One Hot Minute is a very dark album. There's a lot of dark moments on their first four records as well.
If you haven't listened to Uplift or Mother's Milk, those are by far the most metal albums RHCP did. A lot had to do with Michael Beinhorn from Material (Whitney Houston got her start singing with them 40 years ago) and making the guitars louder and heavier. Frusciante and Beinhorn had a lot of issues during the recording of Mother's Milk. It's a shame because I love that sounds and it's the most explosive album they've made.
My main issue with RHCP as I said above, is they're too comfortable with Rick Rubin as a producer (I love his work from the 1980s-2006 but he's not really an innovative producer anymore). You see them live and they can still bring it, but they've tried to become these pop songwriters the last twenty years (since By The Way). I wish they'd get like a Jim O'Rouke, Pharrell, St. Vincent, just someone who interprets music different from Rick Rubin and can really challenge them in a new way. Danger Mouse did that somewhat on The Getaway.
