Mountain Song by Jane's Addiction

Mountain Song is a 1988 single by the Los Angeles band Jane's Addiction. Singer Perry Farrell and bassist Eric Avery wrote it in 1985. It was the first song the two wrote together. The band recorded it twice: an early take on the 1987 soundtrack to the film Dudes, and a new version for their debut studio album, Nothing's Shocking. The single did not chart. MTV refused to air the band's own video for it because of nudity.

The song is older than the name Jane's Addiction. The band took that name from Jane Bainter, a former housemate of Farrell's. She also inspired Jane Says. The early recording went to the soundtrack of Dudes, a 1987 independent film starring Jon Cryer. The band later put it on the 1997 compilation Kettle Whistle.

For Nothing's Shocking, the band cut the song again at Eldorado Recording Studios in Los Angeles, with Dave Jerden and Farrell producing. The lineup was Farrell on vocals, Dave Navarro on guitar, Avery on bass and Stephen Perkins on drums. The arrangement stayed close to the Dudes version. Farrell sang it in a higher key to match the rest of the album. The track opens on Avery's bass riff. Navarro answers it with hazy, stabbing chords before the band comes in.

Warner Bros. released Nothing's Shocking on August 23, 1988. Its cover, a sculpture by Farrell and Casey Niccoli of nude conjoined twins with their heads on fire, kept it out of most big record chains. It shipped wrapped in brown paper. The album reached only No. 103 on the Billboard 200 at first. It later went platinum in the US. It was nominated for the Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. The award went to Jethro Tull's Crest of a Knave.

Mountain Song came out as a single the same year, using only the album version. The B-side was Standing in the Shower... Thinking, another track from Nothing's Shocking. Another single from the album, Jane Says, reached No. 6 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The single was reissued on April 18, 2009, with largely the same packaging. The reissue added inserts for the box set A Cabinet of Curiosities, released that month.

The song has two music videos. In September 1988, Andrew Doucette assembled the first from performance footage that Warner Bros. supplied, without the band's knowledge or input. The band disliked it and had it shelved. It still aired, mostly in Europe and Australia. Excerpts turned up in an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Farrell directed the second video himself. Modi Frank shot the live footage at the Scream, a Hollywood club, on August 19, 1988. The clip included nudity from Farrell and Niccoli. MTV refused to air it. A censored cut, with black bars and shapes laid over the nudity, ran on Headbangers Ball and 120 Minutes. The band released the full version on Soul Kiss, a home video it called a videomentary, on Valentine's Day 1989. Soul Kiss also carried comedy sketches and the song City. City did not appear on an album until Kettle Whistle.

In a 2020 interview, Farrell said the song is about drugs. It covers the climb to the high and the trip back down. The comedown is what he sings about. "For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it," he said. He has also said he wanted to write about big natural things that everyone loves, like mountains and oceans. The Miss Smith in the lyric is his mother. She died by suicide when he was 3 years old. Farrell has said his father's infidelity broke her heart.

Pitchfork called Mountain Song alternative rock's first mission statement. Nothing's Shocking placed at No. 312 on Rolling Stone's 2012 list of the 500 greatest albums. Farrell's next band, Porno for Pyros, played Mountain Song often. It was a regular part of the set on the Good God's Urge tour. Candlebox covered it live in the mid-1990s.

Farrell has kept singing it with other bands too. He joined Foo Fighters for the song at the Metro in Chicago in August 2017, during a Lollapalooza aftershow. It was the third time he had sung it with them. In February 2019, at a show in Atlanta the night before the Super Bowl, he sang it with Foo Fighters again, alongside Tom Morello and Zac Brown. The key and BPM of Mountain Song are on its Song IQ page.