Songfacts®:

• Gavin DeGraw spent time in college before making his mark in music. He took classes at Ithaca College, then Berklee College of Music, but didn't graduate from either. He was better suited diving headfirst into the industry.
  
  During his school days he found himself at gatherings where the smell of reefer was in the air and a lot of people were drunk. This just wasn't his scene - he'd rather be fully present than numb to the world or otherwise inebriated. He came up with name for these: Chemical Parties, and used it as the title to this song.
• "Chemical Party" is from Gavin DeGraw's debut album, Chariot, which includes his breakout hit "I Don't Want To Be." He was signed to J Records, a very hot label that propelled Alicia Keys to stardom. "Chemical Party" wasn't released as a single but often shows up in Gavin's setlists.
• DeGraw has reworked this song from time to time. In 2004 he released a popular acoustic version on the album Chariot Stripped, and in 2024 he revisited the song on his album Chariot 20. Regarding that version, he told Songfacts: "That was the result of a group of musicians in the room playing with sticks and stones and just tinkering. It's the result of jamming, the result of, 'Hey what about this tempo, what about this groove in the background? What if these three notes were happening right here, and I phrased it like this?' That was really an on-the-spot improvised moment that happened with that song."