Stingin' Belle

Album: Opposites (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from Biffy Clyro's sixth album, Opposites, was given its official premiere in the UK on Zane Lowe's Radio 1 show on July 30, 2012. Speaking of the tune, frontman Simon Neil told the DJ: "It was one of the first songs that really clicked when we were recording it. It represents the record. It shows how over-the-top the record is. It might be our last really over-the-top record. We're still keeping things musical, still being as weird as we've always been."
  • Discussing the theme of Opposites, Neil told Q magazine: "It's an album about a fork in the road and how your decisions can take you on one path or the other. One path is the right decisions and one path is the wrong decisions - and each album is going to represent each path."
  • Neil explained to Kerrang! how the tune was created: "The song all came from jamming it around the house. I don't use amplifiers or anything when I'm writing a song. I always like to think that if a song works through a guitar that isn't amplified, then it's definitely going to work through an amplifier."
  • The song features a guest appearance by the only Scottish bagpiper in California. Neil explained to NME: "The question is, why have there not been any two-minute bagpipe solos for the last 20 years? From the first time I played 'Stingin' Belle' it felt Scottish. Even when we flung our riffmania on it, it was still 'This f---ing NEEDS bagpipes.' It wasn't even like we wanted to try them."
  • Neil explained the song's meaning to Kerrang!: "I think it's about truth and honesty, and how sometimes it can be harder to tell the truth than stay silent or lie; be it music, friendships, family. It's so easy to abandon the truth to spare your feelings or someone else's, but it always ends up going awry."

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