The King

Album: Once Upon a Time in the West (2007)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song tells the story of a man returning to his home town in search of an old flame, only to find that her house has been pulled down by builders.
  • Speaking with I Like Music, Hard-Fi drummer Steve Kemp revealed how this song came about: "There's a song on the album called 'The King' which, we'd practically finished the album and he (Richard Archer) was still fiddling around on the guitar with it, singing this song and we didn't have any other stuff. And we started recording it and it grew into this big album finisher. And that was just a couple of ideas on an acoustic guitar and singing. That's how most things start either on a piano or acoustic guitar or whatever."
  • Richard Archer, Hard-Fi's frontman and songwriter, told the Daily Telegraph August 9, 2007 how this song originally surprised him: "I couldn't put my finger on where it came from, and why it moved me so much. It finally dawned on me that the song is about longing for more innocent days, for a time when you didn't have worries, wanting to have that childhood feeling when you think your parents are indestructible."
  • After their coverage of Tim Henman's last professional tennis match in a Davis Cup tie, the BBC played this song as a tribute to the British tennis player.

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