“I couldn’t believe no one had done a song about a white guy trying to be gangsta”: Dexter Holland reflects on The Offspring’s biggest hit
The Offspring‘s Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) is undoubtedly one of their greatest hits. It topped charts all over the world and was on heavy rotation on MTV when it was released in 1998 and has since become a fixture of nostalgic alternative club playlists.
Vocalist and rhythm guitarist Dexter Holland has since explained that he felt he had to rush release the track, thinking he had to capitalise on the song’s tongue-in-cheek subject matter of ridiculing white men imitating black culture to jump on a trend.
READ MORE: Watch Queen’s Brian May join punk rock legends The Offspring onstage in Slovakia
“I felt like there was just something going on at the time,” Holland recalls in an interview with Classic Rock. “When we were recording the album in the studio, I felt like: ‘We have to get this out now because somebody is going to put this out before me. I can’t believe no one has done a song about a white guy trying to be gangsta. We got to get this thing done.’”
At the time, Pretty Fly had a bit of a Marmite reaction. Their managers were unsure if it was too wacky to be a hit, while Holland also remembers an interview where the staff who worked at the outlet were split down the middle over whether they liked it or not.
“I remember doing some of our very first press in Australia and the lady said, ‘We don’t know what to do with this song, half of us love it and half of us hate it,’” Holland says. “I don’t know if that was what I wanted to hear on my first interview! Maybe it was one of those kind of love it or hate it songs, and that added to its appeal.”
However, Holland knew the song had connected with people when he had a conversation with someone in a club after The Offspring had played a show in Italy.
“This guy with a really thick Italian accent said: ‘I know a guy exactly like that guy in my school’. To me that was the most incredible thing, because I knew guys like that in Orange County and, in my head, I could see how this could translate to California or maybe the US. But the idea that a guy in Italy had the same reaction, the same feeling was like: ‘Wow, this really is a global thing.’”
In other news, The Offspring have just released a new album, Supercharged. Check out its lead single Make It All Right below:
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