"Girl's Not Grey" is a song by American rock band AFI. It was released as the debut single from their sixth studio album, Sing the Sorrow (2003), debuting on radio on February 4, 2003. It is the band's third most successful single, peaking at No. 7 on the Alternative Songs Chart and No. 14 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Chart. David Slade directed a music video, featuring elements which have been described as similar to those in Alice in Wonderland.
It is a playable track in the video games Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero Live, and a downloadable track for the video game Guitar Hero 5 and the iPod Touch application Tap Tap Revenge.
Background
According to guitarist Jade Puget, most of the songs for Sing the Sorrow had already been written by the time he wrote the music for the song in a hotel in Toronto, Ontario. Vocalist Davey Havok then wrote the lyrics, with Puget penning the background vocals. Puget later reflected that he had thought the song could have been the album opener, but he was the only band member to think so.
Music video
A music video directed by David Slade was released shortly after the single's release. According to the Fuse TV program IMX, the video is similar to Slade's previous video for "Sour Girl" by Stone Temple Pilots, which also features a strange environment and human-sized rabbit characters. The concepts within the video are similar to the basic plot of Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, featuring a little girl that follows a rabbit into an alternate reality.
By early 2023, the rabbit suit had been donated to the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas,
Live performances
"Girl's Not Grey" was first performed live on January 8, 2002, at the Forum in Inglewood, California. As of April, 1, 2019, it had been performed 538 times, making it the most performed song by AFI. In an interview with Alternative Press, drummer Adam Carson noted that the song "really works as the first song in a set, which is why I think we've played that song probably more than anything".