Plaything

Album: Smother (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • Wild Beasts' drummer Chris Talbott really comes to the fore on this short avant-garde pop song about selfishness. Said bassist Tom Fleming to Drowned In Sound: "Chris plays his drums like a leviathan, and we prefer to hide under our professors desks, covering him in pads and arpeggiators. One of the snare sounds is 12-ton forge hammer, recorded to floppy disk 20 years ago, and another is a bike chain on a bongo. It seemed fussy to put anything much over those three bass notes, so we really didn't."
  • Lead singer Hayden Thorpe explained the song's meaning to Q magazine: "It's a voyeuristic nod to the slightly creepier elements of romance and the disturbing parts of people's desires."
  • The Wild Beasts write copiously about sex and this song includes an invitation to "take off your chemise and let me do as I please." "We openly admit to being obsessed with sex," Fleming told The Guardian. "We say things really bluntly at times – we like to be earthy. The effects of sex and sexuality are really interesting."

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