Sabotage

Yauch played the bass line and the band built the song on top of it. The working title was Chris Rock, after an engineer named Chris who thought it rocked. Ad-Rock recorded the lead vocal on handheld microphones at Mario Caldato's home studio, and the bridge, backing vocals and scratches were added the next day at G-Son. Ad-Rock plays guitar and scratches, Money Mark organ, Eric Bobo timbales and Mike D drums.

Beastie Boys Book (2018) describes the lyric as a joke on Caldato's repeated urging to get work done. In Beastie Boys Story (2020) Ad-Rock called it a fictional rant in which Caldato was the worst person ever. Spike Jonze directed the video, an opening sequence for a fake 1970s cop show, which premiered on MTV's 120 Minutes on 22 May 1994. It was nominated in five categories at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards and won none, and in 2009 the awards gave it a special honor as the best video that should have won a Moonman.

Chart life and covers

It reached number 19 in Britain, where it went Platinum, and 18 on the US Alternative Airplay chart. Rolling Stone ranked it at 475 on its 500 songs list in 2004 and at 245 in 2021. Setlist.fm counts 292 setlists with the song. Phish played it in 1998 at Hampton Coliseum, Elvis Costello pretended to sabotage the band on Saturday Night Live's 25th anniversary special in 1999, Cancer Bats covered it in 2010, and Korn and Slipknot played it live in London in 2015. In 2014 the group won a lawsuit against Monster Energy over the use of Sabotage and three other songs in an advert, and was awarded $1.7 million in damages.