Freak on a Leash

Origins

Following the release of Follow the Leader, Korn promoted the studio album by headlining the Family Values Tour in 1998. The tour ran from September 22 until October 31. "Freak on a Leash" was the first song played on their first tour 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," they asked their fans if they should take out the break. Roughly four out of five of the fans were in favor of taking the break out. The band described the break as "the Biohazard part."

"Freak on a Leash" was recorded in May 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 one of their most successful 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".

Composition

"Freak on a Leash" is four minutes and 15 seconds long. The song uses dissonance, distortion, and various effects to bring 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 perceived 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 utterances 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 reoccurring elements throughout "Freak on a Leash". The song contains vocals, guitars, bass and percussion. It expresses moods such as anger, drama, and sarcasm.

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. A remixed version was made by a fan in San Jose CA and submitted to Live 105 radio station. The new mix pushed the song back to the top ten requested for another month after the original had fallen off. The artist, Nathan E, came to the station for an interview where it was revealed he was just 15 years old.

Music video

A music video for "Freak on a Leash" was released on February 5, 1999, and debuted on Total Request Live. The music video was recorded on December 13 and 14, 1998, in Los Angeles, California. It was directed by Todd McFarlane who was assisted by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The music video contains a mixture of animation and live performance footage. Although it was expected to be released in January 1999, it was pushed back to February 1999. The video starts with an animated segment directed by McFarlane, where the children (including a cameo appearance of Korn as some of the children) playing hopscotch on a cliff the artist drew for the Follow the Leader cover are interrupted by a policeman. An accidentally-fired bullet from the policeman's gun breaks out of the animated world into the real world and wreaks much property damage (while narrowly avoiding hitting many people). The bullet then enters a Korn poster and flies around the members of Korn before going back the way it came, returning to the animated world. Once back in the animated world, the girl in red (also from the album cover) catches the bullet and gives it to the policeman, to which the bullet dissipates; the children leave as the policeman stares at his empty hands bewildered as the camera then focuses on the loose "No Trespassing" sign; which then leads up to the follow-up video for Falling Away from Me featured on the band's then next album Issues. The directory work was described as combining "special effects and clever camera moves in the live action portion of the video."

The video won awards for Best Editing and Best Rock Video at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, and later received the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video in 2000. It became the ninth video that was retired from Total Request Live on May 11, 1999. The music video was also featured on Deuce.

Reception

David Lloyd said it was Korn's most popular song, and on July 8, 1999, the song was the ninth most-infringed song on the Internet. 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 a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance, and its music video won the Best Short Form Music Video. In addition, the music video won a 1999 Metal Edge Readers' Choice Award for "Music Video of the Year". It was also nominated during the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. It was rated the sixth-top single of 1999 by Spin. It reached number six on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number ten on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and was successful on the Hot 100 charting number 89. It was also immensely popular in Australia where the single was certified Gold for shipments in excess of 35,000 units. The song appeared on VH1's list of the "40 Greatest Metal Songs" at number twenty-three. The song made VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 90s" list at number sixty-nine, and VH1's "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs" at number forty-eight. The music video followed the previous success of "Got the Life", debuting at number eight on MTV's Total Request Live program on February 9, 1999, and peaking at number 1 on its thirteenth day, February 25. The video spent ten non-consecutive days at the top position until its "retirement", on May 11, 1999.

In pop culture

Critical reception

Allmusic editor highlighted the song. David Fricke described: "caged-animal babble (the Busta Rhymes-in-Bellevue outburst in "Freak on a Leash")..." Yahoo Music! concluded that Davis delves into his own personal demons, in this song present.

Appearances in media