Songfacts®:

• "Puddle Of Mudd" can do metaphor. They did it in their hit "Blurry," where lead singer Wes Scantlin sings about his life going out of focus. But "She Hates Me" is far more straightforward and not the least bit figurative. This girl really does f--king hate him.
  
  The song has a comic tilt but was inspired by a real relationship. The woman in question is the mother to Scantlin's son, Jordan (they never married). He told the story in an interview with Alabama Life. "I came home really late," he said. "She was furious, and she wouldn't let me sleep in the bed. She made me sleep in the corner on the carpet and I had no pillow. I had a little notebook, and I grabbed a little pencil and I just started writing, 'She f--king hates me. She f--king hates me.' She was always talking about, 'Sex isn't everything in a relationship.' And I was like, 'Alright. But I'm home and feeling frisky so let's get down.' She was like, 'Nope, you're not getting nothing," and that's how that went."
• Wes Scantlin wrote this song with Jimmy Allen, the original guitarist in Puddle Of Mudd. Allen - along with every other member from the '90s except Scantlin - wasn't in the band when it was released. By the time Fred Durst heard the band's demo tape and decided to sign them to his Flawless Records label, the band had broken up. He got in touch with Scantlin and they struck a deal with the label setting him up with new bandmates.
  
  The original Puddle Of Mudd is from Kansas City; the new lineup came from all over and assembled in Los Angeles to make the Come Clean album (a session drummer was used because they couldn't find a permanent one right away). Allen did get a songwriting credit on "She Hates Me" and also on "Blurry" and "Drift And Die."
• "Blurry" was the big hit from the Come Clean album, released as the second single, following "Control." "Drift And Die" was the next single, but "She Hates Me" had already found an audience, particularly among radio DJs who loved to play it. By the time it was released as a single, many had already heard the song. It quickly became a highlight at Puddle Of Mudd's concerts, where the crowd would join in the chorus.
• "She Hates Me" didn't reach its chart peak until December 2002, 16 months after the album was released. The band spent most of that year on the road so they didn't get another album out until late 2003. By then their grungy nu-metal sound had fallen out of favor and they managed just a few more minor hits.
• An unexpected influence on this song is "Summer Nights" from the musical Grease. Listen to both songs and you'll hear the melodic similarities. This lilting groove takes the edge off the lyric to make the song more fun than angry.
• ASCAP certified this as one of the most-played songs of 2002. It somehow appealed to both the women who could relate to the furious feelings toward a guy, and to the many men who have had a once-affectionate girlfriend turn quite bitter.
• This song makes an unflattering appearance in the 2018 episode of The Good Place, "Leap to Faith," where it is played as an instrument of torture in "the bad place" along with "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer."
  
  Apparently, Wes Scantlin doesn't watch the show and didn't have to give his authorization. Asked about it in a 2022 Songfacts interview, he said, "I didn't know anything about that until just now."
• In the video, guys undergoing various degrees of tedium have catharses when the chorus hits. There's also a girl in the video who yells into her phone and rocks out in her bedroom. That's Minka Kelly in one of her first screen appearances. She went on to date Derek Jeter, star in Friday Night Lights, and be named Sexiest Woman Alive by Esquire.
  
  The video was directed by Marc Webb, who cast Kelly in the first movie he directed: 500 Days of Summer. Webb later directed The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.