I Don't Belong
by OFF!

Album: First Four EPs (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • Keith Morris explained in our interview this song is about not fitting in socially or politically: "You know, there's certain places you can go and there's certain places you can't go. There's certain places where you go and you have to stand in line and it's like maybe they might let you in. And in that situation, I'm not going there. I'm not going to stand in line with a bunch of people. A lot of these clubs would equate to a political situation, too. It's like the republicans and the democrats, they don't really care about you, but they love you when you're donating money, and you're buying into whatever bullshit they're whipping out on you. But the same thing about going to a club where they'll make you stand out front to make it look like something is going on, and there's really nothing going on."
  • In our interview, Morris elaborated on his discontentment with the political climate: "I donated $500 to Barack Obama. That's like, well, when are you going to step up and really do something? When are you going to step up and show some balls?" Morris added: "I will no longer contribute to any political situation."
  • OFF! compromise of Keith Morris (Black Flag/Circle Jerks), Dimitri Coats (Burning Bridges), Steven Shane McDonald (Redd Kross) and Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket From The Crypt/Hot Snakes). "I Don't Belong" features on the band's debut album, First Four EPs. Keith Morris spoke to us about how OFF! go about composing their tunes: "Dimitri and I, he'll just start playing guitar and I'll make suggestions - maybe we need to cut that in half or you need to be a little bit more aggressive and maybe let's turn that around and see how it sounds." Morris added the method he used when writing OFF!'s lyrics was inspired by D. Boon's of Minutemen: "When it comes to lyrics, a lot of it is what we will call the D. Boon method...And what would happen with them is D. Boon would come up with an idea and he'd just scribble something down on a piece of paper - that could be three or four words, twelve words - and turn it into lyrics. And you just jump on it and go from there."

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