Song Roulette
A Vulture series in which artists share the stories and strategy behind their lead singles.
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Why are you still doing stuff?, he recalls.
All that was written on the postcard was, Come home.
Practically all is nearly forgiven, Kapranos says.
When I read it, I was just like,Oh my God.
This is a song.
Kapranos went back to his apartment and started working on what became 2013s Right Action almost immediately.
And sometimes you find it in a conversation you overhear.
And we have some really good ones.
DartsofPleasure,FranzFerdinand(2004)
.The Song
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I had been reading an amazing book calledBel-Ami, by Guy de Maupassant.
Theres a section thats a bit likeMadame Bovary.
It deals with the fear and terror of death.
Darts of Pleasure ended up becoming a longer version of my reaction to reading those passages.
The final section of the song, the Ich heie Superphantastisch bit, is completely different.
That was by our guitarist Nick McCarthy.
He was teaching a teenage girl guitar in Glasgow when we started the band to get extra cash.
They made it up together with nonsense words in German.
Its like, Im super fantastic, my name is super fantastic.
I drink champagne with the smoked salmon lox fish.
The two dont go together at all.
Theyre in different keys.
I remember thinking, God, these would sound great if we just ram them together.
When Darts of Pleasure came out, we hadnt even finished This Fire.
We were still in the process of writing the album.
At gigs Darts of Pleasure had a real connection with the audience.
People always went crazy for it.
Thats how we were judging the songs.
Most of our single choices were made through instinctive choices.
We always presumed that was going to be the course of the band.
But when Darts of Pleasure was released, it soared onto the charts.
It went to No.
44 in the U.K., which was completely mind-blowing for us.
I was like,This is crazy.
Im going to be able to pay my rent by being in a band.
After the single came out, that was the first time people started recognizing me in the street.
Id never had that before, which is both deeply unsettling and gives you a strange buzz.
After, we went to a party some of our friends were throwing.
We went from playing to tens of thousands of people to then going back to this environment.
I remember scribbling down snippets of conversations people were shouting in my ear.
Thats where that line in the song comes from.
It amused me to hear this description of my friends.
So thats partly what the song is about as well.
On the second record, we had no idea which of the songs we loved were actually single-worthy.
You just go, Oh yeah, thats got it.
Internationally, Do You Want Totook us furtherthan anything we had done in the first record.
During our first two albums, there were groups like the White Stripes and the Strokes and the Libertines.
I wanted to bring in a more pure pop element.
There were other bands that were beginning to sound a little bit like us.
Also for your own artistic reward, you dont want to repeat yourself.
Ulysses is talking about two things simultaneously.
Particularly the sense that youre never going home.
And then the beginning of the song is a mashed-up version of a story I heard from a friend.
Three of them were sitting around getting really high, as one does, and having a nonsense conversation.
They started reminiscing about the childhood televisionAirwolf, from the 80s; Airwolf was the name of the helicopter.
There was eventually a pause and one guy who was unaware of whatAirwolfwas, said, Am I Airwolf?
Its like, Yes, tonight you are Airwolf.
And from now on you are Airwolf.
It instinctively felt like the song was going to connect with people.
We just had that tingle when we played it together in the rehearsal room.
He said, Oh, I wasnt expecting you to do that.
But its good to be surprised.
Thats the kind of reaction that I wouldve liked to have heard from more people.
Ill leave it at that.
Most of them were blank, but one wasnt.
I still have it at home.
I loved it because it was so evocative.
There was an entire plot suggested by those few come home words within the card to Karel.
But whats the situation surrounding this?
What has been forgiven?
Every single one of the verses repeats that lack of specific detail.
There was debate over Right Action.
I disagreed with the label over this one.
There was another song called Love Illumination that I thought wouldve been a better fit.
I enjoy playing Love Illumination more than Right Action.
Even in the band theres still dissonance over it.
So with the greatest respect to that song, I wouldve preferred Love Illumination as the lead single.
This album came out about ten years into our career.
Its the most difficult and testing period to be in a band.
I think you have to go through itand weather it.
Its the test as to whether youre a true artist and have a long-term vision.
Its a bit like2 Girls 1 Cup.
You know its there, but you dont have to watch it.The footage is from the 1930s.
Most of them let go, but three or four of them didnt.
you’re able to see these young lads hanging on for dear life.
This footage had such an emotional impact on me.
Even now when Im describing it, I feel sick imagining what went through their minds.
Always Ascending came about with me imagining myself in that situation.
Its a metaphor for the things we experience in our lives.
Were inevitably going to be confronted by fear, and we sometimes lose control and just let go.
When you have the feeling of falling through air, you have a loss of orientation.
You cant tell whether youre falling or ascending.
It was another instinctive decision.
Sometimes I feel weird when I do the long introduction live.
Its just like, Fuck me.
This is really self-indulgent.
The fear in Audacious was: Did you ever get the feeling theres something to come undone?
An unreeling in the seaming and the stitching gone?
So you rip a little harder til that rip becomes a run.
Its about how you feel when everything is collapsing around you.
I was sitting at the piano as I wrote this melody and thats how I was feeling.
And I was like,Wait, how am I going to respond to this?
There were other songs that we considered but Audacious prevailed.
When we play the song, its very easy to sing along with it.
Thats a good measure of a single.
This album feels like a very singles-y album.Always Ascendingwasnt a singles album at all.
It was more like a mood piece.
We recently played Audacious for the first time.
Its a slightly surreal and difficult to comprehend experience a bit like Take Me Out in the beginning.
