Songfacts®:

• Kevin Godley and Lol Creme are from England, but they have always been fascinated by America. This song was inspired by their first trip to New York City, when they were members of the band 10cc. The lyrics are absurd ("Digital bathrooms drilling for furs..."), but so is the city in many ways.
  
  "We were just into everything American, and New York seemed to be a harsh epitome of everything that was happening at that time," Godley told Songfacts. "I was struck by the absurdity of it and the contrast: this against the other thing, but all living and working together and banging up against each other at the same time. That was insane."
• The music video was directed by Derek Burbidge, who did several videos for The Police. In the clip Godley & Creme are bandleaders at a supper club of some kind, but their band is very strange, comprised of masked figured that move like robots.
  
  It was the first video for a Godley & Creme song, and it opened their eyes to the wonders of the medium. The duo soon became A-list music video directors, responsible for Duran Duran's "Girls On Film," The Police's "Synchronicity II," and Eric Clapton's "Forever Man."
  
  In his Songfacts interview, Kevin Godley told the story: "We weren't touring as Godley & Creme, but we had an idea for a short film that we thought could work, so we took it to the record label and they said, 'Yes, you can make this but we have to get a proper director to do it for you because you've never done it,' which is exactly what happened. We were part of the scenery.
  
  We were just performers, but during that day of shooting we absorbed everything that went on, and towards the end of the day, we were suggesting shots, and we insisted on being involved in the editorial process because we loved it. We thought, Wow, this is amazing, this brings what we've done into context with what we used to be, which was art students. This brings the visual in contact with the musical. Wow, we could do things with this.
  
  So, we absorbed everything, we assimilated everything, and by the end of the whole process, we had kind of taken it over, much to the director's irritation. He was very kind actually. Derek Burbidge was his name. But he kind of mentored us in a way and showed us what things could do."
• Godley & Creme never stuck to any particular song structure, allowing their tunes to take lots of unexpected twists and turns. This one has a semblance of chorus ("Strange apparatus...") but the title never shows up in the lyric.
• The album version runs 5:51. A single version, released in Australia and parts of Europe, was cut down to 3:55.
• Sting, who used Godley & Creme on several of his videos, both as a solo artist and with The Police, released his own "Englishman In New York" in 1987. His song tells the story of the author Quentin Crisp.