"Breaking the Girl" (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

If you only listened to the first two tracks of the Rick Rubin-produced Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) when it was first released, you likely thought that Red Hot Chili Peppers hadn’t evolved much since Mother's Milk (1989).  Granted, Michael “Flea” Balzary’s bass playing was a little more subtle and less breakneck, and John Frusciante’s guitar was a little more Sly & The Family Stone than Black Flag.  But the ingredients were pretty much the same: frontman Anthony Kiedis rapping/singing over party-ready funk-rock.
But even now when I reach track 3, “Breaking the Girl,” it surprises me.
Suddenly, you’re no longer getting down on the Sunset Strip.  You’re transported to Tangier or Casablanca as Flea’s melodic bass and Frusciante’s strummed acoustic guitar (reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s song “Friends”) play with urgency in waltz-like 6/8 time.  Chad Smith’s drums rise like the sun through mist and ride on a jazzy groove that Buddy Rich might have dreamed up, as Kiedis croons some very intimate-sounding vocals.
In fact, the lyrics were intensely personal for Kiedis.  He reveals in his autobiography Scar Tissue (2005) that the song is about a difficult breakup with his then-girlfriend, model Carmen Hawk. 
According to Kiedis, their relationship was tumultuous, vacillating between uninhibited sex and explosive quarreling.  He gives pretty blunt descriptions of a number of frightening episodes, where Hawk accused him of cheating (some justified, some not) and either attempted or succeeded at hurting herself in retaliation.
Kiedis notes that traumatic events from Hawk’s early childhood--particularly, her father ditching her family and her subsequently never getting to know him--resulted in her fear of abandonment and self-destructive tendencies, not to mention use of sex as a narcotic to numb her pain.  As much as Kiedis urged her to seek counseling to work through her issues, as much as he craved their visceral love making, and as much as he genuinely loved her, he finally acknowledged the relationship was destructive, and it had to end before it caused permanent damage.
In working through these feelings, he penned the poem that became the basis of “Breaking the Girl.” 
Writes Kiedis, “Even in the heat of our turbulent battles, I never considered her an evil person or hated her.  I just saw her as a girl who never got a chance to grow up and deal with all her pain.”
At the same time, he began reflecting upon his own turbulent upbringing: his father having been a hard-partying, drug-dealing, wannabe-actor who had a taste for cocaine and women.  Lots of women.  So, lyrically, the song also is about Kiedis staring down his own demons.
“I began to question myself and wonder if I was stuck in repeating my father’s pattern of hopping from flower to flower, the girl-of-the-day thing.”
Hence the stanza that begins Raised by my dad / girl of the day...
The track’s raw honesty, melodicism, funkiness, and inventiveness (they're beating on metal pans and pipes, culled from a scrap yard, during the bridge) make it one of my favorite songs ever created by Kiedis & Co. and one of my favorite songs of the 1990s.