The Offspring - Want You Bad
“Want You Bad” was the second single from The Offspring’s Conspiracy of One album. The song was sold as just a single unlike the band’s previous song, Original Prankster, which was a free downloadable song on the band’s website. It sold fairly well and was featured on the band’s Greatest Hits album.
The title is a play on words, with the narrator of the song saying to his girlfriend he wants her ‘to be bad’ as in a gothic way, rather than he wants her ‘badly’.
The music video takes place in a party, with the band playing in the background. The protagonist a man trying to get some presumably sexual action in the form of the song’s meaning (domination from a girl) but with each try he is slapped and left feeling embarrassed.
As this takes place the partygoers start to open up cans with the Offspring logo on them. These explode violently with foam when opened leading to the party starting to get chaotic.
Eventually the man finds a woman who is willing to participate in his desired activity and the two go off to a private place. Meanwhile the party has descended into utter chaos as the foam covers even the band and some of them are tackled to the ground by the partyers (though the music still plays).
In the closing moments of the video we see the woman shaking one of the Offspring cans in front of the man. The man looks on excited as it finally explodes - the foam appears to blow his head off while the woman laughs and smiles as the camera fades to black.
Dexter Holland, the band’s lead vocalist, said he hated this video, saying that it was too ‘cheesy’.
The song is often decried by some of The Offspring’s older fans as a typical pop-punk song. It was not a massive hit either compared to previous second singles from the band, for example Self Esteem.
However, the song is a live favourite and is often played as one of the last songs in a show before the encore.
The song was featured in the film American Pie 2 in a montage in which Michelle teaches Jim how to satisfy Nadia. However, the track was not included on the film’s soundtrack.
The song was also featured as the opening song to Tomcats.
