Songfacts®:

• When aliens take over Earth, they won't destroy us, they'll just make us their pets. That's Porno For Pyros lead singer Perry Farrell's beliefs, which he outlines in "Pets," the band's most popular song.
  
  Farrell is being glib, but only a little. He claims to have seen aliens and makes a compelling case for why they would domesticate humans. After all, that's what we did to dogs and cats and horses, which were once wild animals.
  
  If Farrell gets a head of steam on the subject, he'll offer lots of details, as he did in 1994 when he was the keynote speaker at the CMJ Music Marathon. He used his speech to explain how the government was covering up evidence of aliens.
• The song started as a track Porno For Pyros guitarist Peter DiStefano wrote called "Vriana Dean" about a 12-year-old girl he knew that was murdered in Santa Monica along with her 18-year-old brother Brian in a 1978 home invasion. "I had a crush on her when we were in seventh grade," he told Songfacts. "It was like a picking song."
  
  When DiStefano played it for Perry Farrell, Perry had him speed up the tempo and he added his own set of lyrics to the song. The original "Vriana Dean" is heard at the end of "Pets" as the song resolves. That's an emotional section for DiStefano, as it brings up memories of Vriana.
• "Pets" was a big hit on the Modern Rock chart, going to #1 and spending five weeks at the top. It got lots of airplay on the many "alternative" radio stations that were popping up in the early '90s, and the song had enough pop appeal to reach #67 on the Hot 100.
• The first Porno For Pyros single was "Cursed Female," which was backed by its companion song, "Cursed Male." It didn't get much attention, but when "Pets" was issued as the next single, it got a music video and the group's label, Warners, gave it a big promotional push. It was an easy sell in the alternative genre because Perry Farrell epitomized the genre. His previous band, Jane's Addiction, was "alternative" in pure form, outré without ever becoming too popular. And in 1991 he started the Lollapalooza festival, a showcase for these kind of bands. He's pretty much the godfather of the genre.
• The music video was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a husband-and-wife team that went on to direct the acclaimed 2006 movie Little Miss Sunshine. Instead of going with extraterrestrials or actual pets, the video features a kid with a sparkler, a dance troupe, and various fitness athletes (fitness competitions were picking up steam at this time, with ESPN broadcasting the Fitness America Pageant). It's a pastiche of images that an alien would look at and find amusing, supporting the idea that we'd end up being their pets.
• Porno For Pyros followed up "Pets" with the single "Sadness." They slowed down and didn't play many shows in 1994 and 1995, but one of them was Woodstock '94. They got back into the swing in 1996 with their second album, Good God's Urge, which includes "Tahitian Moon." The band fell apart at the end of the year as DiStefano was battling cancer and having a hard time managing his addictions. They did a song called "Hard Charger" in 1997 with Dave Navarro guesting, making it sort of a Jane's Addiction reunion (Navarro and Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins were both in Jane's Addiction; Navarro joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers after that band broke up and was still a member when Jane's Addiction when this song was released). That year, Porno For Pyros had a tour scheduled, but they canceled it and Jane's Addiction toured instead. Both bands would later reunite.