Songfacts®:

• Deftones frontman Chino Moreno wrote "Mascara" about his first wife, Celeste Schroeder, but it's not a love song.
  
  Talking to a Dutch reporter for television series Lola da Musica during the band's 1998 Around the Fur tour, Moreno explained, "That has to do with my wife and how there's certain things I really don't like (about her). And there's a lot of things that I do like."
  
  During the interview, he expressed his frustration that she never treated his music seriously, even when he let her know that it was coming from his heart and expressing his deepest feelings. He describes playing the newly recorded Around the Fur (Deftones' second album) for her as they drove through the hills and how frustrated he became when she said nothing. His emotion is apparent in the interview as he struggles to understand why she acted so indifferently.
  
  The song's not a diss track, though. With the final line, "You're married, to me," he turns it into something else. He told Lola da Musica, "And then at the end of the song, I say 'it's too bad that you're married to me,' because basically, I'm probably even worse. So it's like, even though there's these messed-up things about you, and there's these good things, I'm probably the worst person to be stuck with."
• Despite his interview sentiments (perhaps "rationalizations" is a better term), the couple divorced in 2006 after 12 years or marriage and two children. Moreno married Risa-Mora Moreno in 2012 and had a daughter with her.
• Deftones dropped the song from their setlists in 2015. They brought it back on March 2, 2013, while playing a secret show at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. They played several of their deep cuts during the performance.
• With their second album, Around the Fur, Deftones were still developing their own sound. They'd emerged from the metal scene, but they wanted a unique identity and were more drawn to atmospheric bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure. They began implementing the shoegaze-genre sound, which is apparent on "Mascara" as much as any other track from the album.
• The lyrics reference his wife's "long shady eyes," which connects to the "Mascara" title. While trying to explain to Dutch media the pull she had on him despite their frequent friction, Moreno returned to describing those eyes. He seemed completely captivated by them, even after four years of apparently contentious marriage.
• Like many Around the Fur songs, the band brought this one together in studio. They had the rough concept before recording began, but it was all fleshed out and finalized in studio.
• Later in his career, particularly after getting sober sometime around 2022 (in multiple 2025 interviews, he said he'd been sober for around three years), Moreno had an easy time expressing vulnerability in songs about love and relationships. It wasn't always that way, he has said, but he holds "Mascara" out as an early attempt to do so.