Dead Womb

Album: Heads Up (2002)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song caused some controversy because the title implies it has something to do with abortion, but it's actually about a totally different topic: cocaine!

    "It's about how we didn't do cocaine, and we didn't want to do cocaine," singer/drummer Sebastien Grainger explained in a Songfacts interview. "It was a manifesto against me doing drugs. And you know what? I didn't do drugs throughout our entire band because I had a manifesto to stick to. So, that song was to help me."
  • The song opens with a synthesized voice that says:

    La cocaina no es buena para su salud
    la cocaina is not good for you


    This was done using a basic text-to-speech program on a computer.
  • The electronic group Crystal Castles, which like Death From Above 1979 is from Canada, sampled the "la cocaina no es buena" part for their 2008 song "Untrust Us."
  • This frantic rocker was included on the Heads Up EP, the band's first release. At the time, they were known as Death From Above, but added the 1979 to avoid conflict with Death From Above Records. Their first album, You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, was released in 2004 and sold well in their native Canada, but they split up a few years later and didn't return with another album until The Physical World in 2014.
  • In the lyrics, the band says they're "tired of sluts coming up to us in the clubs with their cocaine," and says, "We're looking for wives." They got their wish: over the next few years, both Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler got married and started families.

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