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Y'All Want a Single

"Y'All Want a Single" is a song written and recorded by American rock band Korn for their sixth studio album, Take a Look in the Mirror. It was released in the UK as the album's second single in March 2004, chosen by fans through a poll on the band's official forum.

Music and structure

At a running time of 3:17, the song contains 87 uses of the word "fuck", although the radio edit replaces the word with "suck".

Concept

We were recording this album before we went to Ozzfest. We had 10 songs written and recorded, but we weren't feeling it would be the whole album. We wanted to add 3 or 4 more songs, so we came back to record them. Then our record company was like 'Hey, we'd really love to have a single' and our management, The Firm said 'We would really like to have a smash hit single, man, can you dig it?'. We were really appalled by that scene. They wanted 'Got the Life' or 'Freak on a Leash', and that shit wasn't flying with us at all! For the first time in our lives we were dissecting our music, and try to analyze the structure of those songs, trying to figure out what made them huge hits. But Korn never works like that, and while we're all were wondering, Jonathan came up with a line: 'Y'all want a single? Say: FUCK THAT!' and we wrote Y'All Want a Single as a big 'fuck you' to them. Damn, Jonathan is really good at motivating us this way."^[1] – James Shaffer

Chart performance

The song was not officially released to radio stations in the U.S., although it did receive enough unsolicited airplay to achieve a peak of number 23 on Billboard's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks for the issue date of February 28, 2004.^[2]

Music video

The video, directed by Andrews Jenkins, presents a mob of fans destroying a record store with statements about the music industry displayed throughout. The video begins with all of the members of Korn entering the record store and destroying all of the music CDs and tapes and dismantling the racks and shelves that they are stored on. As the video moves along, facts criticizing the music industry and major label companies flash across the screen. The video itself only cost $150,000 to make.

Captions in the music video

Notes