Clean Sheets

Album: All (1987)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • How's this for a metaphor for unfaithfulness: When you pull back the covers in your girl's bed, you see the sheets are dirty because another guy has been sleeping there. Or as Descendents lead singer Milo Aukerman sings, "Those sheets are dirty and so are you."
  • "Clean Sheets" was written by Bill Stevenson, the drummer for the Descendents who was also their producer. According to Milo Aukerman, it's about a real person.

    "That was a girl that he was dating and she cheated on him," he told Thrasher Magazine. "So that was his song documenting the fact that she was cheating on him."
  • The song is part of the 1987 Descendents album All, the last one they released before their hiatus later that year. The band's frontman, Milo Aukerman, has a parallel life as a biochemist. The group's 1982 debut album is called Milo Goes to College because he was indeed leaving for college (University of California, San Diego). When the band took a break in 1987, Milo worked in the field while his bandmates formed a new group called All, named after the album. Descendents returned to action in 1995 and released their next album, Everything Sucks, in 1996.
  • Aukerman says "Clean Sheets" is "the first truly slick pop song that we tried to do." It's a sound that influenced later group's like Good Charlotte and blink-182.
  • Fittingly, this "Clean Sheets" came to Bill Stevenson when he was in bed. He says he woke up one morning with the song fully formed in his head.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Alice Cooper

Alice CooperFact or Fiction

How well do you know this shock-rock harbinger who's been publicly executed hundreds of times?

Mike Campbell

Mike CampbellSongwriter Interviews

Mike is lead guitarist with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and co-writer of classic songs like "Boys Of Summer," "Refugee" and "The Heart Of The Matter."

Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MG's, Blues Brothers)

Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MG's, Blues Brothers)Songwriter Interviews

Steve Cropper on the making of "In the Midnight Hour," the chicken-wire scene in The Blues Brothers, and his 2021 album, Fire It Up.

Ramones

RamonesFact or Fiction

A band so baffling, even their names were contrived. Check your score in the Ramones version of Fact or Fiction.

Does Jimmy Page Worship The Devil? A Look at Satanism in Rock

Does Jimmy Page Worship The Devil? A Look at Satanism in RockSong Writing

We ring the Hell's Bells to see what songs and rockers are sincere in their Satanism, and how much of it is an act.

70s Music Quiz 1

70s Music Quiz 1Music Quiz

The '70s gave us Muppets, disco and Van Halen, all which show up in this groovy quiz.