It’s 1998, and as Korn are gearing up to release Freak On A Leash, they’ve already carved out a place for themselves in the increasingly chaotic landscape of heavy music.

Their Self-Titled 1994 debut and the darker, heavier follow-up Life Is Peachy had made them underground icons. But it was Follow the Leader, the album that birthed Freak on a Leash, that turned Korn into something else entirely: the voice of a broken generation.

Frontman Jonathan Davis never pretended to have the answers. Instead, he cracked himself open for everyone to see. And nowhere is that more brutally clear than in Freak on a Leash, a song that became a flagship for a band and a fanbase, desperately seeking release. This is the story and meaning behind the song that made Korn the reluctant kings of Nu-Metal.

A Rally Against The Music Industry

When Follow the Leader was released on August 18^th 1998, Korn were already riding the wave of an emerging movement. But they were far from invulnerable. Years of relentless touring, skyrocketing fame, and deep-seated personal traumas were eating away at the band from the inside.

Freak on a Leash opens with the line:

Something takes a part of me / Something lost and never seen.

A direct swipe at the music industry that was taking full advantage of a band in the midst of exploding, speaking to Ultimate Guitar, Jonathan Davis stated:

That’s my song that rails out against the music industry. It’s about how I feel like I’m a fuckin’ prostitute. Like I’m this freak paraded around, but I got corporate America fuckin’ making all the money while it’s taking a part of me. It’s like they stole something from me, they stole my innocence and I’m not calm anymore.

Davis has spoken openly over the years about his battles with childhood abuse, bullying, substance addiction, and mental health issues. All of that bleeds into these lyrics. The song feels less like it was written and more like it was exorcised with the now-infamous.

Boom-da-da-mmm-dum-na-ee-ma…

So, how exactly did just such a visceral and iconic moment come together? Davis has said that when he was recording this part, he let his emotions dictate the sounds rather than trying to force words into a structure. It’s anger without language, pain without filter, but also with a healthy dose of external influences, as Davis explained to Metal Hammer:

We were jamming and I started mixing beatboxing and this scat thing I do. I loved vocal percussion, dudes like [old-school rapper] Doug E. Fresh and his beat- boxing from back in the day. I listened to a lot of old school hip hop and New York freestyle, that’s what I listened to with all the 80s new wave stuff.

It also may not have happened were it not for renowned producer Ross Robinson.

Freak On A Leash was where Ross was digging his nails into my back. That was some weird shit, real fucked-up. Once I got to that moment I was like, ‘I’m done with this, this is fucking stupid.

But Freak on a Leash also deals in betrayal and exploitation:

You and I weren’t meant to be / A cheap fuck for me to lay.

There’s a sexual aggression here, but it’s laced with revulsion. In many ways, it’s a reflection of how Korn themselves were feeling about their own rapid rise to fame, used by the music industry, misunderstood by critics, and yet desperately needed by fans.

How Korn Dominated MTV

The animated and live-action hybrid music video, directed by Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn) and costing over $800,000 to make, perfectly encapsulated the song’s sense of violated innocence. A bullet tears through frozen moments of daily life, narrowly missing people and objects, a metaphor for uncontrollable violence intruding into the everyday.

When the video dropped on MTV, it didn’t just dominate the airwaves; it made them impossible to ignore.

Freak on a Leash would go on to win a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video and an MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock Video. They would also record the unplugged version with Amy Lee of Evanescence, but awards hardly capture the song’s real impact. For thousands of kids feeling like outcasts, it was a lifeline. Korn weren’t just talking to them, they were them.

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Korn Freak On A Leash Lyrics In Full

Still Freaks After All These Years

Looking back, it’s staggering how much Freak on a Leash still resonates. Even decades later, it doesn’t feel like a relic from a lost era.

Korn themselves have also evolved. Brian “Head” Welch left the band in 2005 to find sobriety and faith, only to rejoin years later. Drummer David Silveria left in 2006, Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu has been on hiatus since 2021, and Jonathan Davis faced personal tragedy, losing his wife Deven Davis in 2018 after a long battle with addiction. And yet, through it all, Korn has continued making music that refuses to polish its edges, as Davis explained to us in 2019 when releasing the album The Nothing.

It’s definitly personal. I went through a lot of crazy stuff last year, and it’s just me dealing with that. When I called it “The Nothing,” there was this dark force going through me, through what I went through. It wasn’t totally dark. I really skirt the line between dark and light all the time. I was trying to name that, and that’s the only thing I could come up with. You couldn’t really name it – it’s the nothing. It’s the stuff I’ve been fighting and going through. With what I went through last year, the whole record’s about that. It’s a really intense emotional record for me.

Freak on a Leash isn’t just another nu-metal hit, it’s a survival story. It’s every ugly feeling we’re taught to bury, dragged into the light and screamed out loud. And in doing so, Korn helped build a space where all the broken misfits could finally find each other.

Something might have taken part of them. But Korn gave something back, too – and that gift still echoes today.

So many people go through the same stuff. That’s just life. I mean, that’s why I’m still here doing what I do, because it helps so many people. That’s the real payoff. We could have retired years ago. You know, just sit at home and do nothing. No, we like going out and helping people, we like making art. That’s what we do.

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