Time Machine

Album: Tape Deck Heart (Deluxe Edition) (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, Frank Turner dreams of building a time machine, and imagines the places he'll visit. At the end of the song, he reveals his real motive: going back a few years to before things turned ugly with his girlfriend, so he could revisit the good times they had.
  • A history buff with a degree in the subject from the London School of Economics, Turner started writing this song simply thinking of places he would like to go, including the American Old West, which has always fascinated the singer. The song changed course as he was writing it, however, and it became "kind of a weird love song in the long run." (From our Frank Turner interview.)
  • Turner mentions some time-shifting films in the lyrics: Donnie Darko is a 2001 film dealing with alternate realities, and the DeLorean is a reference to the time travel vehicle in Back to the Future.

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