Songfacts®:

• Morrissey's Your Arsenal album is regarded by many fans and critics as Morrissey's heaviest effort. The record represented a change in direction for the singer with its glam rock influence, most likely because of the production of ex-Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson. Tragically, Ronson died of liver cancer at the age of 46, less than a year after the album's release.
• This song was released as a single in the USA, reaching #13 on Billboard magazine's Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was not a single release in the UK.
• Lyrically conflicted and ambivalent, this song appears to find Morrissey turning against his homeland, whilst bathing in the adulation he was receiving at the time across the Atlantic. "We look to Los Angeles for the language we use," he sings. "London is dead."
• Morrissey performed a version of this song on Saturday Night Live after the release of Your Arsenal.
• The song was used in promotions for the Fox crime drama TV series Lie To Me.
• The song was re-issued in 2011 on limited edition 7" vinyl formats with two previously unreleased b-sides: "Safe, Warm Lancashire Home" and "Treat Me Like A Human Being" as part of the promotion for a compilation, The Very Best of Morrissey.