Songfacts®:

• "Famous" is a send-up of the rock star lifestyle that inevitably goes to your head. Puddle Of Mudd lead singer Wes Scantlin experienced this quite vividly when after a decade playing local bars in and around Kansas City, he got a record deal, was sent to Los Angeles, and made the Come Clean album, which sold over 3 million copies and made him at least B-list famous.
  
  "You think you're all cool and s--t, and you live in the Hollywood Hills, blah blah blah," he told Songfacts about the song meaning. "I was just kind of poking fun at myself."
• The lines, "The money is for nothing and the chicks are for free," are a reference to the 1985 Dire Straits hit "Money For Nothing," which includes the refrain:
  
  That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
  Get your money for nothin', get your chicks for free
  
  That song also deals with rock stars who have lost touch with reality.
• Wes Scantlin wrote this song with Puddle Of Mudd bass player Doug Ardito and an outside writer named Brian Howes, who also produced the track. Howes, formerly of the band Closure, also worked on another track from the album, "It Was Faith."
• "Famous" is the title track to Puddle Of Mudd's third album. Wes Scantlin's bandmates are essentially hired guns; when he landed a record deal, none of his fellow Mudders were invited along for the ride. For the Famous album, he had a new guitarist (Christian Stone) and drummer (Ryan Yerdon). It was also the first PoM album with outside songwriters. Future American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi contributed to "It Was Faith" and Shelly Peiken, who co-wrote Christina Aguilera's "What a Girl Wants," was part of "Radiate."
• Scantlin borrowed the guitar riff from "Famous" for the track "Stoned," also produced by Brian Howes and part of the band's next album, Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate.