Buck Rogers

Album: Echo Park (2001)
Charted: 5
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Songfacts®:

  • Frontman Grant Nicholas (from Kerrang! magazine June 21, 2008): "If I put my hand on my heart, I was just trying to write a song that sounded like the Pixies. On the demos, it was much more raw, too, but I think the end result was a bit poppy, a bit throwaway."
  • Kerrang! asked Nicholas what was going on when he wrote this song, which tells the story of a relationship ending in which the girlfriend of the subject of the song leaves him for a character called Buck Rogers. He replied: "I was going through a break-up and it was inspired by that. I just put a load of words down without really thinking about them. It was supposed to be stupid and funny - it was never supposed to be used for anything. I thought it would be a B-side at best; the label went berserk for it though. I actually re-wrote it and changed all the words but Gil Norton, our producer, made me stick with the original."
  • Kerrang! asked Nicholas about the lyric "Drink cider from a lemon." He replied: "Aargh! That's always the line people ask about! I was just being stupid. It was fun! If I'd have known people would still be asking about it, I definitely would have changed it. Part of me is annoyed about the song because we've written so many better ones and that one's the hit. The other part of me is proud because we proved we could write a great pop song. It's not the deepest song I've ever written but there's nothing better than standing in front of a big festival crowd and seeing the reaction."
  • This reached #1 in South Africa.

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