Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart

"Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart" is a song by American rock band Stone Temple Pilots from their third album, Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop. An alternative rock song, it was released as the album's second single in 1996. It topped the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and was the most-played song on active rock radio stations in the United States in 1996.^[2] The track later appeared on Stone Temple Pilots' greatest hits album, Thank You (2003).

The core music was written by drummer Eric Kretz, while the lyrics were written by Scott Weiland. Weiland stated in a radio interview that the very ambiguous and mysterious lyrics to the song alluded to a "very bad experience dropping acid." In his autobiography Not Dead and Not For Sale (its title a reference to the lyrics of Trippin'), he adds that it "reflects my hunger for redemption".^[3] The song's chorus riff references Led Zeppelin's "Dancing Days",^[4] which the band performed on Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin.

In 1997, "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart" received a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2015, Loudwire and Stereogum ranked the song number six and number one, respectively, on their lists of the 10 greatest Stone Temple Pilots songs.^[5][6] In 2021, Sadie Sartini Garner of Pitchfork praised the song as a representation of alternative rock "whose burning chorus would've fit on Alice in Chains' Dirt, and whose choppy, pepped-up verses cleared a happier path out of grunge that bands like Third Eye Blind would gladly follow."^[7]