Songfacts®:

• Puddle Of Mudd frontman Wes Scantlin has had some issues with what he referred to in a Songfacts interview as "evil freaking crazy-ass b--ches," but they often provide material for his best songs.
  
  In "Away From Me," he lashes out at a girl who cheated on him when he was on tour. "I was being lied to and deceived - as usual - by someone else, so the whole thing is about deception," he told VH1. "It's hard, because everything that I wrote about actually happened. After the relationship fell apart, all the lyrics [turned out to be] basically true. I wanted to stay with the person, but she was sinister. So getting out of it was probably a blessing in disguise - and I got a really passionate song out of the whole thing."
• "Away From Me" was the lead single from Puddle Of Mudd's second album, Life On Display. The band spent most of the '90s playing bars in the Kansas City area. When they finally got a record deal, they were essentially disbanded and frontman Wes Scantlin was the only member signed. With help from the label, he put a new lineup together that recorded their debut album, Come Clean. Released in 2001, it could the tail end of the hard rock heyday and delivered hits with "Control," "Blurry," and "She Hates Me."
  
  They toured constantly, so by the time Life On Display was released late in 2003, rock music had moved toward alternative and electronic. "Away From Me" was just a minor hit, and the album didn't meet expectations. Scantlin kept the band going, changing lineups from time to time.
• Dean Karr shot the video, which shows the band performing the song in a tent in the middle of nowhere. Karr also directed Godsmack's "Voodoo" and various videos for Dave Matthews Band, including "Crash Into Me."