A glance at the title could lead you to believe that this song is bashing gay people, but it's not. It's about how lead singer Jon Davis went to school and people would make fun of him, calling him a "faggot." It's a very emotional and genuine song where Davis lashes out at his tormentors.
"That song I wrote about being picked on as a kid," Davis recalled. "In high school and junior high, I was a very feminine dude" who used to wear makeup and loved Duran Duran. I wasn't gay, but people liked to assume that I was gay and call me 'faggot.'"
A track from Korn's first album, their guitarist Brian "Head" Welch told us that it's a great example of him using "the Bungle chord," where he plays two notes that are three steps away. This was pioneered by a California band called Mr. Bungle, which was led by Mike Patton of Faith No More.
Like "Good God," a video was shot for this song, but was not released. The clip eventually surfaced on the 1997 Who Then Now? Korn video, which was sold on VHS and released on DVD in 2009. The video was directed by McG, who went on to direct several blockbuster movies, including Charlie's Angels and Terminator Salvation. He also directed Korn's videos for "Shoots And Ladders," "Blind" and "Clown."
In the US, "fag" is a derogatory term for a homosexual that is also used to degrade just about anyone who is different in some way, which is how it applied to Davis. The TV show South Park tackled the subject in their 2009 episode "The F Word," where the kids used the word to refer to biker gangs, showing how meaningless the term really is.
In England, "fag" has a completely different meaning: it's a cigarette or a bundle of sticks.
The song was written at a house on Orange Street in Huntington Beach, California just after Jonathan Davis had joined Korn. Brian "Head" Welch recalled: "[Jonathan] moved in with us, with his girlfriend, and I remember sitting in the room he rented. I had my guitar in there and I wrote the riff. We just came up with the song 'Faget' right then and there. It was the very beginning."
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