When Filter dropped Title of Record in 1999, fans expecting a Short Bus sequel got something closer to a breakup diary produced by Brian Eno. “The label came in like, ‘How are your fans going to react to this?’” Richard Patrick remembers. “And I’m like, I don’t know—that’s your job.”
This was the guy who screamed “Hey man, nice shot” just a few years earlier, now singing in falsetto about emotional fragility with the world’s softest backup vocals... from a married Smashing Pumpkin. Yes, that Darcy.
“She was literally laying on the studio floor with a pillow, singing Cancer with the mic hanging above her,” Patrick says. “Then she was like, ‘You’ll have to change my name. My label will kill me.’ So we listed her as Miss Blue.”
Title of Record was a pivot, a risk, and somehow Filter’s biggest commercial success. Its enduring legacy lies in that tension: post-industrial rage laced with vulnerability, scream therapy interrupted by lullabies. “One of my friends said, ‘Dude, my son heard Take a Picture and said Filter went soft.’ I was like, really? Because Welcome to the Fold is the first track on the album and it wants to burn your dad’s house down.”
Let’s talk about that lyric: “I’d kill your father to destroy his seed.” Patrick laughs. “It was the meanest thing I could think of. And it was on the radio. Howard Stern was like, ‘What is this??’” Today he changes it up live: “Now I go, ‘Mom, mom, where’s my shotgun—no wait, where’s my microphone.’ The message is: don’t give kids guns. Give them guitars. Give them drum machines.”
The roots of Title of Record came from trying to not sound like Nine Inch Nails, ironically. “After Short Bus, I wanted nothing to do with synths,” he says. “But eventually, you realize, fuck it. Let’s go full Crystal Method.” The result was Filter’s biggest hit and also one of the most conflicted, written during a clandestine relationship with a married bandmate, fueled by booze, pills, and heartbreak. “I’d just had a fight with her, turn on the mic, take a Xanax, sip of tequila, boom—hit record. It was method acting.”
There were other influences too—Smashing Pumpkins, of course. “Billy told me, ‘Don’t just scream. Try other stuff.’ And Darcy kept saying, ‘Sing like a little boy.’ That’s what she did to Billy. That’s the Pumpkins sound, man—half of it is her.”
Even in a nü-metal era obsessed with tough-guy posturing, Patrick wasn’t afraid to zag. “Some of my peers found their niche and stayed in it forever. Black clothes, upside-down crosses, monster boots. I’m not that guy,” he says. “I’m not gonna be 75 in a schoolboy outfit, jumping around in makeup.”
Which might explain why, two decades later, Title of Record still holds up—and Patrick's still experimenting. His current direction? “I want this new record to be the most extreme album ever. One song might sound like Pantera, the next like ambient whale sounds. No vocals. Just feelings.” There’s also Thoughts and Prayers, his meditation on gun violence: “I’m bleeding out of open wounds, but I got your thoughts and prayers.” So no, he hasn’t exactly mellowed.
And then there’s the film work—scores for movies like Last Rampage, where Patrick explored his inner Southern gothic. “I told the producer, let’s write some Kentucky Fried music,” he grins. “And we did.” He loves the studio life—writing by day, helping his kids with homework by night. “It’s good to be 51 and not jumping around like a little monkey anymore.”
But the hunger’s still there. “Every time I turn on my computer, I’m trying to beat Title of Record. Still. That’s the bar.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
