"A.D.I.D.A.S." is a song written and recorded by American nu metal band Korn for their second studio album, Life Is Peachy. It was released as the album's second single in March 1997.

Background

The title is an acronym for the statement "All Day I Dream About Sex" and indirectly refers to the popular sportswear brand Adidas. The backronym of the brand name dates to the 1970s. "All Day I Dream About Sex" was a recurring joke in the sports shop where Jonathan Davis worked in the early days of Korn. When the band began, Davis wore an army green tracksuit. He soon drew a "Korn" logo on one with a pen and presented it in live performances that included the bagpipes. He said wearing Adidas "was about breaking the mould, man ... it was about going against everything that metal was supposed to be." From 1993 to 1997, the band established its style by wearing mainly Adidas T-shirts and tracksuits, which became a trend and unified their fan community. It also helped that the clothing brand was also willing to provide them with free merchandise. Davis was described in 2002 as having an "addiction and a mad obsession to sex", and "constantly fantasizing" about women, and claimed to be a "porn movie specialist". "A.D.I.D.A.S." contains the sexually charged lyrics: "I don't know your fucking name / So what? Let's fuck!". The song was a "wink" to the old backronym "All Day I Dream About Sex" and to the brand. At the time, some said Korn was "indecent, vulgar, obscene, and intends to be insulting. Fans wearing the band's characteristic style of clothing with the Korn logo—printed T-shirts were considered "not different than a person wearing a middle finger on their T-shirt". While the terminology "nu metal" appeared shortly after 1998, Korn and Adidas had pushed the boundaries of the metal code; Davis later stated, "our attitude has always been punk rock."

Live performances

"A.D.I.D.A.S." was played at Woodstock 1999 to a crowd of 275,000. The song was a staple of the band's live set list up until about 2007, when it started to be played far less frequently, and its performances temporarily ceased around 2009. In 2021, the song was performed live for the first time in 12 years, and is now played frequently by the band again. When guitarist Brian "Head" Welch rejoined Korn in 2013, it was one of the songs he requested the band never play again. In 2003, there was an incident where Welch saw his daughter Jennea, then aged 5, reciting the explicit lyrics to the song, which was a contributing factor to him leaving the band and finding Christianity. Welch later recalled, "She was five years old, and I'm sitting there watching her sing 'All day I dream about sex'. That's not right. I don't care if she didn't know what she was singing. It still freaked me out. It's just not right for her to see her dad strung out on drugs, and it's not right for her to sing that song. It's like I was stealing her childhood or something." The song was played live at the music festival Sick New World in Las Vegas among other places.

Music video

The music video for "A.D.I.D.A.S." was filmed in Los Angeles with Joseph Kahn directing and released in March 1997. The plot revolves around a car accident that causes the death of all Korn members at the hands of a pimp and his prostitutes. The police officers, firefighters, and paramedics secure the crash site. The corpses are placed in black body bags, where they appear to come alive and move violently. They are then transported to a grotesque morgue where a pathologist examines the corpses. When the band members are undressed, it's revealed that Davis is wearing stripper clothes. This is the only video where Davis can be seen wearing one of his customized sequined Adidas tracksuits. The radio mix of "A.D.I.D.A.S." is used for the video. When asked about the video in a May 1997 interview with Australia's The Buzz, band member Fieldy remarked "The director.... it was his idea. He just did the Shaq video with the helicopter, and he did the Westside Connection video. He has had pretty much all hip hop crap. Then he came to us with his idea, he knew that Jon used to work for the morgue in the coroner's office and all that crap so...We liked his idea and we're like - let's do it." Arvizu later claimed, "It was one of the hardest videos we ever made because we all had to lie still on cold metal slabs for hours, pretending to be dead. We wore dirty blue contacts in our eyes that made us partially blind while they were in."

In pop culture

"A.D.I.D.A.S." played in a season 1 episode of adult animated comedy Daria titled "Road Worrier", which originally aired on July 7, 1997. That same year, the music video appeared in an MTV program titled 12 Angry Mothers, which featured a group of mothers who judge different music videos with a "yes" or "no". It received a unanimous "no".

Reception

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic praised the song. He writes ""A.D.I.D.A.S."—a kinetic funk-metal track allegedly built around the schoolyard acronym "All Day I Dream About Sex"—was Korn's breakthrough single, and deservedly so—it was arguably the best moment [on Life is Peachy].

Chart ranking, accolades, and legacy

"A.D.I.D.A.S." ranked 24th on Australian radio station Triple J's annual "Hottest 100" list for the year of 1997. Mexican station 91X also ranked it 18th on their "Top 91 of 1997" list. Noisecreep ranked "A.D.I.D.A.S." as the fourth best Korn video in 2013. They state "Pimps, hookers and Korn perishing in a car accident? That's not why 'A.D.I.D.A.S.' is one of the best Korn videos. It's the deft way that the band explored the seedy underbelly of a city and pushed shock value to the limit that makes it so." In 2019, Loudwire ranked the song number six on their list of the 50 greatest Korn songs, and in 2021, Kerrang ranked the song number ten on their list of the 20 greatest Korn songs. "Direct a Korn video contest" winner Sean Dack took inspiration from the "A.D.I.D.A.S." video when directing Korn's "Alone I Break" in 2002.

Track listing

Australian release

US release

UK release No. 1

UK release No. 2

Austrian and Swedish release

Charts

Year-end charts