"Under the Bridge" (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

“Under the Bridge” from Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) remains one of my favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks.  From the moment I heard it on MTV years ago, I immediately loved John Frusciante's delicate but funky playing.  It ripples like water over Flea's melodic and tasteful bass groove.  It always reminded me of a Curtis Mayfield tune in the way its complex, jazzy melody unfolds; Anthony Kiedis's confessional lyrics about junkie life in inner city L.A. also make it feel a bit like a lost track from Super Fly.
For as many times as I've listened to the song, the sudden key change at the climax—when Chad Smith's drums kick in and the band shifts gears for the dramatic conclusion, never fails to sneak up on me.  It's an unexpected move to go from a major to a minor key at the end of a song; the natural tendency is to ascend as you reach the denouement.  But that's what pulls at the ear and creates intrigue.  It's also quite simply an intelligent bit of musical composition that underscores the shift in emotion from bittersweet melancholy to outright regret in Kiedis's lyrics.  (That final 1:30 signaled to me there was more going on in the hearts and heads of these guys than just "Yertle the Turtle.")
In his 2004 autobiography Scar Tissue, Kiedis discusses the composition of the song.  He recounts that he'd kicked his years-long addiction to heroin and was dedicated to staying away from any kind of drugs, which caused an unintentional rift between him and Frusciante, who (along with Flea) was a proponent of smoking weed as part of the writing/recording process.  Kiedis says he felt shut out by his bandmates, which brought up old emotions about his painful breakup with actress Ione Skye—the result of his drug use spiraling out of control.
Channeling his emotions, he wrote a poem in his notebook that simultaneously addressed his feelings of regret for letting drugs ruin his relationship and expressed gratitude to the spirit of L.A. for watching over him like a guardian in his darkest times.

"I felt I had thrown away so much in my life, but I also felt an unspoken bond between me and my city.  I'd spent so much time wandering the streets of L.A. and hiking through the Hollywood Hills that I sensed there was a nonhuman entity, maybe the spirit of the hills and the city, who had me in her sights and was looking after me.  Even if I was a loner in my own band, at least I still felt the presence of the city I lived in."

Kiedis never intended for the poem to be song lyrics, feeling that the tone was much too soft and somber for the band.  It ultimately took producer Rick Rubin stumbling upon the poem in Kiedis's notebook and urging him to take it to his bandmates to spark the composition of one of the most honest, cathartic songs of the 1990s.

"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.

"Give It Away" (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

"Give It Away."  
The video for this song freaked me the hell out when I first saw it in 1991.  A bunch of shiny dudes in the desert, jumping around like they were tripping balls.  
WTF?!
I couldn't deny, though, that these guys sounded like nothing else in the late 80s/early 90s (except maybe Jane's Addiction).  MTV was just beginning to realize that hair metal sucked, yet they still dutifully put Warrant, Poison, and their ilk in rotation with no apologies--music that I never warmed to.  But here came these freaky-styley cats who sounded like the sons of Sly Stone and Patti Smith and not some glammed-out, boozed-out Led Zep wannabes.  (That's not to say they didn't have their vices or abstained from anything.  A number of their songs, including a few from Blood Sugar Sex Magik, deal with this.)  But these were punky funkateers who just didn't care about appealing to the same mulleted audience that was pumping its fingerless leather-gloved fists to "Cherry Pie."  Which suited me just fine.
Chad Smith and Flea grooved harder than most any rhythm section out there.  John Frusciante's guitar attack was equal parts thrash and funky chicken scratch.  And Anthony Kiedis spit lyrics like an ol' skool hip hopper but could also slide into a soulful wail at will.
"Give It Away" was a perfect synthesis of each of those elements, held together by a tight groove and an infectious lyric that might have been about sex, charity, or a little of both, capped off by that mantra-like refrain: Give it away, give it away, give it away now. 
Shit is still my jam.