Song of the Day: Plush (by Stone Temple Pilots)

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Arleigh

My latest pick for “Song of the Day” takes me back….way back to those early days post-high school. Only a couple years removed from graduating high school and maneuvering my ways through the turbulent seas of what would be my college years, it was only typical that music would be one of the few things that would anchor things for me during my Adrift Years.

Stone Temple Pilots is part of what I consider as the Big Four of alternative rock of the 1990’s or as some would label that particular sound as “grunge”. Alternative rock, grunge or just plain old hard rock, Stone Temple Pilots made their mark in the early 90’s rock scene with the second single off of their 1993 debut album Core.

“Plush” has always been one of my favorite songs of that era. I played that song on repeat and was one of my go-to Stone Temple Pilots track until “Interstate Love Song” a year later came along. The song was carried by Scott Weiland’s iconic vocals and its dark lyrics. I never knew how dark a song “Plush” was until finding out from a Weiland interview that it was based on a true story of a girl who had been kidnapped and murdered in the early 90’s.

Whether a song inspired by a true-crime story or a metaphor for a failed relationship (as Weiland has said the lyrics represented), “Plush” will remain one of those songs from my young adult years that I would revisit every year to reminisce.

Plush

And I feel that time’s a wasted go
So where you goin’ ’til tomorrow?
And I see that these are lies to come
So would you even care?

And I feel it
And I feel it

Where you goin’ for tomorrow?
Where you goin’ with the mask I found?
And I feel, and I feel when the dogs begin to smell her
Will she smell alone?

And I feel so much depends on the weather
So, is it rainin’ in your bedroom?
And I see that these are the eyes of disarray
So would you even care?

And I feel it
And she feels it

Where you goin’ for tomorrow?
Where you goin’ with the mask I found?
And I feel, and I feel when the dogs begin to smell her
Will she smell alone?

When the dogs do find her
Got time, time to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it
When the dogs do find her
Got time, time to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it

Where you goin’ for tomorrow?
Where you goin’ with the mask I found?
And I feel, and I feel when the dogs begin to smell her
Will she smell alone?

When the dogs do find her
Got time, time to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it
When the dogs do find her
Got time, time to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it

To find it
To find it
To find it

Music Video of the Day: Sour Girl by Stone Temple Pilots (2000, dir. David Slade)

Posted on June 29, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

My introduction to Stone Temple Pilots was the album Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop–not my recommended way to start listening to STP. I remember liking this song, but when I bought the album, it felt generic and instantly forgettable.

The video for Sour Girl on the other hand is still something I remember to this day. Apparently, despite the fact that they look like a creepy version of Teletubbies, they were inspired by a dream that Scott Weiland had. At least that’s according to the Wikipedia article that draws from the Songfacts page on the song and video. The song was written about his divorce from his first wife. I’m assuming this is the same wife who he wrote Interstate Love Song about since according to Scott Weiland’s memoir [Not Dead & Not for Sale: A Memoir]:

[About Sour Girl]: “Everyone is convinced that it’s about my romance with Mary [Forsberg, second wife],” Weiland writes in his autobiography Not Dead and Not For Sale. “But everyone is wrong. ‘Sour Girl’ was written after the collapse of my relationship with Jannina [Castaneda, first wife]. It’s about her. ‘She was a sour girl the day that she met me,’ I wrote. ‘She was a happy girl the day she left me… I was a superman, but looks are deceiving. The rollercoaster ride’s a lonely one. I pay a ransom note to stop it from steaming.’ The ransom note, of course, was the fortune our divorce was costing me. And the happy state, which I presumed to be Jannina’s mood, was because she had finally rid her life of a man who had never been faithful.”

[About Interstate Love Song]: “She’d ask how I was doing, and I’d lie, say I was doing fine.”
“I imagined what was going through her mind when I wrote, ‘Waiting on a Sunday afternoon for what I read between the lines, your lies, feelin’ like a hand in rusted shame, so do you laugh or does it cry? Reply?”

That explains the bleak video, why she is returned to a happy-looking state while in the dark world of the video, and why Weiland is left in the dark world with the creepy creatures.

Considering Weiland’s life and the meaning behind this song and video, it’s interesting that it was directed by David Slade. You might remember him as a producer and director of episodes of American Gods and Hannibal. He also directed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010).

Yari Schutzer was the production manager. Schutzer seems to have worked on around 25 music videos as well as some movies.

Martin Coppen shot the video. He has worked on at least 25 videos. Since his credits date back as far as 1988, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are many more.

Bronni Bakke was the casting director, which I guess mean she picked out Sarah Michelle Gellar and the people in the suits. She worked on The Bogus Witch Project (2000) and a few other things. According to her IMDb profile, she “impersonates Britney Spears, Marilyn Monroe, Felicity Shagwell and Lara Croft.” From what I can find, it looks like she passed away in 2016 from breast cancer.

Enjoy!

30 Days Of Surrealism:

Music Video of the Day: Interstate Love Song by Stone Temple Pilots (1994, dir. Kevin Kerslake)

Posted on September 26, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I’ve always found it ridiculous that Stone Temple Pilots seems to be that band from the early 90s that keeps getting misclassified. The one I see all over the place is that they are a grunge rock band. Every time I read that, I wonder if they have ever actually listened to their music. I find it particularly baffling since they are a straightforward hard rock band–if you must classify them. I get the impression that people overthink their music, and tend to lump them in with grunge because it sounds close enough if you only listen to a couple of songs like Creep, Big Empty, or Plush. Also, I think there tends to be some general confusion about what is and isn’t grunge as opposed to just 90s hard rock. It doesn’t help that the term alternative rock can be slapped on just about anything that wasn’t obviously pop or punk in the 90s. That’s my best guess about this non-issue that I see from time to time.

I was introduced to them via the album Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop, and the song Big Bang Baby in particular. I later picked up Core and Purple. Today I have all six of their studio albums. Out of all of their songs, I would say Interstate Love Song is right up there at the top along with the hidden lounge singer song at the end of Kitchen Ware & Candy Bars.

There isn’t much to say about the music video itself. The beginning of the music video makes me think of Queen Kelly (1929) for some reason. The video has a character from the silent film portion running around with his nose growing in order to fit with the theme of lying that the song is singing about.

The rest is washed out and has Scott Weiland dressed how I imagine Marc Bolan would look like if he had made it to this decade. I think we can just chalk those things up to that it was the 90s and that was Weiland’s style. I really think it’s that simple.

They got director Kevin Kerslake to do the music video who did most of Nirvana’s videos, but also worked with both Stone Temple Pilots and the spin-off group Velvet Revolver on several occasions. He also worked with other major bands of the era such as Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Green Day. He appears to still be working in music videos today since I can find a credit for him shooting Bang Bang for Green Day, but otherwise his credits seem to drop off in the mid-2000s. Like quite a few music video directors, he also has gone on to numerous concert films and music-related documentaries.

Enjoy!

Song of the Day: Big Empty (by Stone Temple Pilots)

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Arleigh

Tonight the music world found out that Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland passed away at the age of 48 while on tour in Minnesota.

The years after graduating from high school was a chaotic time for me. not knowing what role I had for myself moving forward and afraid of the world beyond the regimented, secured, but understood confines of high school. While I enjoyed the freedom of being a young adult after graduating in the summer of 1991 the reality of it all was that I wasn’t that far removed from still being a teenager a couple years later.

I call these my adrift years.

From this time in my life I was drawn to the music that every young adult trying to leave his teen years behind. Whether it was hip-hop, metal and, the genre of the era, grunge, I was listening to it. While I wasn’t as huge a fan of grunge as the rest of my contemporaries of the time I did gravitate to a couple of the titans of the genre: Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots.

It was with Stone Temple Pilots that I was introduced to one of my favorite frontman of my Adrift Years: Scott Weiland.

Weiland encompassed not just the brooding, alienation that made grunge such a popular genre of music during the 1990’s but also had a touch of the wild and dangerous aspect of what made rock frontmen so-called Rock Gods. He was the Axel Rose of grunge. An enormously talented vocalist, but one who was also scandal-bound with his off-stage drug use and self-destructive behavior.

Scott Weiland helped make those years adrift during the early 1990’s with his singing. It’s a shame and a loss to the music world that like other rock legends before him his early years battling his inner demons would take him away too soon.

Nothing epitomizes who Scott Weiland was to me better than the song “Big Empty” which was the first single off of their second album Purple.

Big Empty

drivin’ faster in my car
falling farther from just what we are
smoke a cigarette and lie some more
these conversations kill
falling faster in my car

time to take her home
her dizzy head is conscience laden
time to take a ride
it leaves today no conversation
time to take her home
her dizzy head is conscience laden
time to wait too long
to wait too long
these conversations kill

to much walkin’, shoes worn thin
too much trippin’ and my soul’s worn thin
time to catch a ride
it leaves today, her name is what it means
to much walkin’, shoe’s worn thin