TREVOR: The lyrics were inspired by my diaries. I had spent the evening re-reading entries from my teenage years. The melodrama!
I was listening to a lot of Television Personalities at the time. I love the way his songs sound effortless and innocent yet loaded with dry humor. I wanted to capture one of those breezy simple melodies with that same wistful but only half-serious mood.
I had to get out of bed in the middle of the night and work out the tune. Melodies often come knocking as I’m drifting off or waking. Many have vanished forever because I chose sleep. Luckily I had a guitar by the bed.
The song was having a difficult birth in the band till Robbie started playing a random riff and I suggested he graft it onto the song. Then bang, everything fell into place quickly.
Demoing the song in 2009
ROBBIE: While we were mastering the album at Sterling Sound in NYC we got the idea to add a bit of stereo tape-flanging to this track. It sounded like fun and seemed to suit the song somehow. As they hadn’t done this for years, the technicians at the studio got excited and wheeled a big old reel-to-reel tape machine into the mastering suite. Dave McNair, our mastering engineer, did a bunch of versions with the effect applied to different sections of the song and settled on this one as the best. We got cold feet at the last minute before sending the album off for production and almost didn’t use the flanged version. I’m glad we did.
