Always

Album: Back into Your System (2002)
Charted: 47 51
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Songfacts®:

  • The lead single off Saliva's Back into Your System album, this was their most successful hit, making it to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for one week.
  • Saliva frontman Josey Scott wrote the song with Back into Your System producer Bob Marlette. "We wanted that song to have a strong buildup," Scott told MTV News. "It takes you to different places and different levels of intensity. We worked hard to find those tones and sounds that really expressed all the different moods in the song. It starts out smooth and sweet and ends up being very violent."
  • The song describes a dysfunctional relationship worsened by domestic abuse. Scott based his lyrics on someone he knew. "My girlfriend's sister Christie went through something pretty nasty with a young man she was involved with," he explained. "I just took it from her life and applied it to mine."
  • The song's music video features a guy haunted by a woman of his past. Lead singer Josey Scott recalled in an interview with Michelle LaRose for Metal Masters : "We had the LA Police Department block off eight blocks of downtown Los Angeles because we had to do a car crash in the video. The first day of the video, it was like 5:00 in the morning, they did this car crash. It was so awesome! I think every kid in the world would have enjoyed seeing that. It was a lot of fun."

    "We sort of made it like an isolated part of downtown," Scott added. "Sort of like Devils Advocate or Vanilla Sky where they block off a part of New York City except it was Los Angeles. It was like the city had been abandoned and this guy is looking for himself and doesn't find himself until the end of the video. Then he realizes that people were there all along. So it's kind of got a story to it."

    (For more on Saliva check out our interview with guitarist Wayne Swinney.)

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