White Pony

The band came off the road and spent four months in the studio, the longest they had given an album. Singer Chino Moreno has said most of that time went by without songs, and that writing "Change (In the House of Flies)" was the point where the five of them started working as one unit. Bassist Chi Cheng put it plainly: they felt they had nothing to lose, so they made the record they wanted to make. Moreno deliberately wrote himself out of the lyrics. "I basically didn't sing about myself on this record. I made up a lot of story lines and some dialogue, even." Guests were not part of the plan either, but Maynard James Keenan of Tool sings on "Passenger" and Rodleen Getsic on "Knife Prty", and Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots left an uncredited vocal on "Rx Queen" after inviting Moreno to his studio. It entered the Billboard 200 at number three and sold 178,000 copies in its first week, which makes it the band's best seller. Five editions exist: the ordinary first pressing holds eleven songs, the numbered red and black limited editions add "The Boy's Republic", and the later white sleeve puts "Back to School (Mini Maggit)" at the front — a marketing decision Moreno has said he was unhappy with. The running order here is the ordinary first pressing's as printed.