‘I couldn’t think of a line for the chorus – but we had just been to France. I got Baudelaire into the lyrics somewhere, too’
This song was an ode to glam rock. My older sister was really into Marc Bolan and her passion for him and his sound really rubbed off on me. I love the vocal effects and drum sounds on those old records.
I couldn’t think of a lyric for the chorus, though, and I thought to myself: “What do I need?” We’d just been to France, hence the “Ooh la la”, but we wondered if it was sufficient. It felt good, though, so we stayed with it and kept layering the voice and then added these vocoder voices. We liked the synthetic robo feel alongside the natural voice.
The lyrics were personal, about a relationship and how I was feeling. I like to use visual metaphors. The breakdown section, about breaking a heel on a shoe, came from this old 1950s film I’d seen on TV. An image of a woman, walking along the road in a tight pencil skirt, limping because the heel had broken. That stuck with me. I had a book of Baudelaire poems hanging around, so I got him into the lyrics somewhere, too.
Portishead’s Adrian Utley, a friend of ours, came in to play guitar, which was quite a departure for us because for ages we wanted to stay clear of guitars. He’s so instinctive the way he plays, incredibly lean with the notes. He got the right tone immediately.
