Songfacts®:

• With lyrics that compare a woman to a force of nature, "The Right Stuff" explores the risks of falling for such a formidable female. Despite the potential consequences, former Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry is powerless to resist her charms:
  
  Her nature's wild
  It's hard to beat the right stuff
  It's mountain high, river deep
  The right stuff
• The music for "The Right Stuff" was written by The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr and adapted from the "Bigmouth Strikes Again" B-side "Money Changes Everything." Smiths frontman Morrissey is said to have declined to write lyrics for "Money Changes Everything," so it was kept as an instrumental until Ferry was introduced to the song.
  
  Speaking to Sonics in 1989, Marr recalled being asked to play on "The Right Stuff": "He [Ferry] didn't know who I was. But he was looking for co-writers and someone suggested me to him. Someone played him some Smiths records and he went, 'Oh, this guy plays guitar all right!' So he invited me down to the studio."
• In the 2006 book Johnny Marr: The Smiths & the Art of Gun-slinging by Richard Carman, Marr shared his thoughts on the direction Ferry took this song: "I didn't really analyze the lyrics that much, because Bryan is more into phonetics anyway, and for me that song is very much phonetical and rhythmic. The fact that Bryan didn't write anything radical didn't worry me because phonetically he got it right and with those really high backing vocals it sounded perfect. And the band that Bryan used was much more true to the spirit of the track. He used Andy Newmark on drums from Sly Stone and Guy Pratt on bass which was exactly the nature of the track really. Perfect."
• Johnny Marr can be spotted in the official video for "The Right Stuff." The energetic clip combines footage of Ferry and his band performing the song alongside female dancers with more artistic shots of women drenched in silhouette.
• On December 5, 1987, Ferry and Marr performed this song on Saturday Night Live. The episode was hosted by Danny DeVito, who was promoting his directorial debut Throw Momma From the Train, and included a memorable sketch that saw the American actor playing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on a tour of Washington, DC.
• Despite extensively promoting "The Right Stuff" with Ferry, Marr hinted at their creative differences to Sonics: "Bryan Ferry was an old hero of mine and it was great to work with him, but the end result was... he's a bit blow-waved."
  
  Ferry, meanwhile, was more complimentary in an interview with Q in 2010: "He [Marr] was just a great player with, like myself, a timeless desire to make music."
• "The Right Stuff" was the first single from Ferry's seventh solo album, Bête Noire. The song reached #37 on the UK chart and remained there for seven weeks. It also came paired with three remixes: "Extended Remix," "Brooklyn Remix," and "Dub Remix."
• Bête Noire features a highly esteemed range of special guests and session musicians, including David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Neil Hubbard, Marcus Miller, David Williams, and Abraham Laboriel. Having decided to take his music in a poppier direction, Ferry also worked with American songwriter Patrick Leonard on the album. Leonard is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Madonna, co-writing hit singles such as "La Isla Bonita," "Like a Prayer," and "Frozen."