Hey all! To kick off the new Q&A initiative, I went crazy on Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Dark Necessities.” There were no questions on the song before I started, so I added a ton of questions and answered them myself! Did you know that astronauts never actually had Astronaut Ice Cream?

https://genius.com/Red-hot-chili-peppers-dark-necessities-lyrics

I tried to get some staple questions out there and then focus in on some more specific ones that can connect to annotations—this is a great opportunity for directing people to annotations who wouldn’t otherwise click on them.

Can anyone make some music connections to answer this question: “What other songs does ‘Dark Necessities’ sound like?”

Did I slack on any questions? What other questions should be added? Which of these questions are the most important, and which ones suck? Share your thoughts below, and add your own questions!

@genius-editorial-board

Tagging top contributors on “Dark Necessities” and top RHCP scholars: @niiicola @rossbrill @calusa @Freeus @Heisenferg @JustinOchoa @whega @funkybungle @Hossdizzle @JuicyKitty @YoungCocoaButter @ewokABdevito @igordebraga

Awesome work on the Q+A! In terms of musical connections, the bouncy baseline and intro especially reminds me of “Can’t Stop”. Also sensing a hint of the “Parallel Universe” intro in the guitars.

I’ve also seen a couple of people compare Kiedis' vocals in the verses to “Warlocks” and “Charlie” – the latter is probably a bit of a stretch in my opinion.

Really like some of these questions. This makes me hope Q&A’s will be automatically closed soon though lol, and that we’ll show more then. It’s hard to find the question you’re looking for right now. I especially enjoy the questions with the form “what does this lyric mean” (and the answers Colby!).

“Where can I listen to this song?” feels odd however. The song can easily be found on YouTube or the play button can be clicked. It just feels kind of weird and not song-specific. As does “who collaborated with RHCP on this song?”. The metadata is right beneath the Q&A section.

What other songs does ‘Dark Necessities’ sound like?

The bass reminds me of RHCP’s “Can’t Stop”, while the chorus maybe does of “Plastic Soldiers” by Portugal. the Man (Danger Mouse prod). Somebody else could probably make better connections though.

@niiicola @Dyazz Those connections sound pretty good to me! You guys should answer the Q. :)

“Where can I listen to this song?” feels odd however. The song can easily be found on YouTube or the play button can be clicked. It just feels kind of weird and not song-specific. As does “who collaborated with RHCP on this song?”. The metadata is right beneath the Q&A section.

I’m right there with you on those. The idea was to experiment with redundancy on the song page, so even though the play button or collaborators are obv right there, are people seeing them? Or would people pay more attention to those elements if they were highlighted in the Q&A section? (Admittedly the “where can I listen to this” one is something I’m considering cutting out altogether, because they’ve probably already heard the song by that point)

Let’s revisit this one. I added a LOT of questions here.

How many questions are too many? Which questions on this page are the best?