Songfacts®:

• The "Sad City Sisters" are ladies of ill repute Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson encountered during his tenure as a rock star. Anderson had little interest in these indulgences and looked at them with a critical eye. He explained: "Sad City Sisters throws up memories of a Saturday night in Cardiff, Wales when I was on my way home from our concert in St David's Hall some years ago. It could equally well have been any town in the UK, I suppose, or even most cities of the Western World. What possesses hell-bent and vulnerable young people to slip so easily into that tragic loss of dignity and end up sprawling drunk in a wet and windy street at midnight?"
• This was the second single from The Zealot Gene, the first Jethro Tull album since 2003, although Anderson put out solo albums in the interim. "Sad City Sisters" came with a video directed by Sam Chegini that portrays the subject of the song as a puppet being passed around and manipulated.