User:CrowzRSA/Sandbox/Sandbox 2/Follow The Leader/Freak on a Leash

"Freak on a Leash" is a song by the American heavy metal band Korn and is from the studio album Follow the Leader. Prior to the album's release, Korn had an instrumental section of the song, described as a "noisy guitar break" The section was taken out of the song after their fans requested it be taken out. After Follow the Leader's release, the song was released as a single on May 25, 1999, and since, has been relesed several times. The song uses dissonance, distortion, and effects, and is "aggressive."

The "Freak on a Leash" music video was released on February 5, 1999. Directed by Todd McFarlane in Los Angeles, California, the video explores both animations and live performances mixed together. As a result, the band released a music video that currently has won both the Best Short Form Music Video and the MTV Video Music Awards and has retired from Total Request Live. With mixed reviews, the single debut number six on the Alternative Songs chart, twelve on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and twenty–four on the UK Singles Chart

Origins
Before Follow the Leader was released, they promoted the studio album by going on the Family Values Tour. "Freak on a Leash" was the first song played on their first date. The original composition had a "noisy guitar break in the middle," but after the group found out that radio stations are not fond of "noisy guitar breaks," and when the band asked fans if they should take out the break and four out of five of them were in favor of the idea, they decided to take the break out of the song. The band described the break as "the Biohazard part."

"Freak on a Leash" was recorded around March of 1998 at NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood, California. It was released as their second single, on May 25, 1999, and is considered to be on of their "biggest" singles. Since its first release in the United Kingdom, it has been released over ten times. It was released in the United Kingdom three times,  twice in Mexico and Australia,  once in Germany, once in France, once in the United States, and once in Switzerland. Guitarist Brian "Head" Welch said that the song "was about Jonathan Davis being a freak on a leash—sort of a kinky dominatrix thing." Leah Furman said that the song "revolved around the mixed blessings of fame."

Music and structure
"Freak on a Leash" is four minutes and fifteen seconds long. The song uses dissonance, distortion, and effects brings the song "to life." David Lloyd from the University of Alberta said that the song was an example of a "nonsense – utterance" technique used by lead vocalist Jonathan Davis. Lloyd also noted that the song contained "fragments of English–language words," and said that they "can be percieved in the midst of Davis' gibberish." Lloyd later went on to say that "Davis is giving voice to his inner basic feelings which are trying to resist being shaped or conditioned by untterances of others."

Elias Pampalk said that the song was "rather aggressive" and said it was heavy metal/death metal. Pampalk proclaimed that "melodic elements do not play an important role in 'Freak on a Leash' and the specific loudness sensation is a rather complex pattern." There are reoccuring elements throughout "Freak on a Leash". The song contains vocals, guitars bass and percussion. It expresses moods such as anger, drama, and sarcasm. Steven Thomas Erlewine, employee at Allmusic, considers the peice to have genres like heavy metal, alternative metal, and rap–metal.

An acoustic rendition of the song was recorded with Jonathan Davis singing a duet with Amy Lee of Evanescence, at MTV studios in Times Square, New York City for Korn's acoustic set on December 9, 2006.

Music video
--> A music video for "Freak on a Leash" was released on February 5, 1999, and debuted on the Total Request Live. The music video was recorded on December 13 and 14 of 1998, in Los Angeles, California. It was directed by Todd McFarlane, and assisted by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The music video contains mixtures of animations and live performance footages. Although it was expected to be released in January 1999, it was pushed back to February 1999. The video "gives all involved the chance to flaunt their strengths" and "twists an animated adventure around the children he created for the Follow The Leader cover art." The directory work was described as combining "special effects and clever camera moves in the live action portion of the video." The live footage in the video was filmed at Woodstock 1999. Korn's performance at Woodstock 1999 was described as "thunderous."

The video won the Best Short Form Music Video award in 1999 and was also in the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. The film was the ninth video that was retired from Total Request Live on May 11, 1999. The music video also won the Best Editing Award, and was featured on Deuce.

Reception
"Freak on a Leash" received generally mixed reviews by critics. Allmusic gave the single one and a half out of five stars, but the reviewer, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, just said that the "Australian single for "Freak on a Leash" contains the video for the song as a CD-ROM," but did not say anything about the composition or structure. David Lloyd said it was Korn's most popular song, and on July 8, 1999 the song was the ninth most top pirated internet song. iTunes said that "Wright and Thompson bring a brighter, sharper sheen to Korn’s sound, which helped make huge hits out of 'Freak On a Leash'."

The song was nominated for the Grammy Award Best Hard Rock Performance and its music video won the Best Short Form Music Video. It was also in the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. It was rated the sixth top single of 1999. The song is the second and final charting single from Follow the Leader. It reached number 6 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and number 10 on the Mainstream Rock Songs chart, although it failed to chart on the Hot 100, the music industry's standard singles chart for popular music. It was also immensely popular in Australia where the single was certified Gold for shipments in excess of 35,000 units. The video appeared on VH1's List of 40 Greatest Metal Songs at number 23. The song made VH1's 100 Greatests Songs of the 90's at number 69, and VH1's 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs at number 48. The music video followed the previous success of "Got the Life", debuting at number 8 on MTV's Total Request Live program on February 9, 1999, and peaking at number 1 on its thirteenth day, February 25. The video would spend ten non-consecutive days at the top position until its "retirement", on May 11, 1999. "Freak on a Leash" has been used in Puma commercials, was featured in The Simpsons episode "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot". The song is featured in the video game Guitar Hero World Tour.

Track listing

 * French single


 * Austrailian single

Chart performance

 * Main Entry


 * MTV Unplugged rendition