Self Esteem
by The Offspring
- 108
- BPM
- A minor
- Key
- 8A
- Camelot
- 46
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
Dexter Holland wore three band T-shirts in the video for "Self Esteem": a Sex Pistols shirt at first, then one from the Germs, and finally a Vandals shirt when he briefly appears as a human skeleton. Guitarist Noodles later said he gave the Fender Stratocaster he played in the video to one of the actors.
Director Darren Lavett shot the clip in August 1994, just after Smash had gone both gold and platinum. It shows people doing stunts, intercut with the band on stage. MTV played it heavily. That helped carry the song onto mainstream radio.
The Offspring from Garden Grove, California, put it on Smash as the eighth track. Epitaph released it as the second single in 1995. It reached number one in Iceland, Norway, Latvia and Sweden, and was nominated for Best Song at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards. Smash went on to sell over 11 million copies worldwide, one of the best-selling albums on an independent label. According to Nielsen's year-end report for 2019, "Self Esteem" was the sixth most-played song of the decade on mainstream rock radio, with 131,000 spins.
Self Esteem runs at 108 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.22 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 556 ms. It is in A minor, Camelot 8A, which shares its notes with C major and mixes cleanly with D minor and E minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.