Songfacts®:

• Formed in 1976 as the Nu-Sonics (named after a cheap brand of guitar), this Glasgow band were galvanized into Orange Juice by impresario Alan Horne at the end of the decade. In the early 1980s they were part of the scene that their original label, Postcard, celebrated as "The Sound of Young Scotland" along with fellow bands Josef K and Aztec Camera.
  
  Orange Juice are best known for this song, which reached #8 on the UK Singles Chart in February 1983, the group's only UK Top 40 hit. Frontman Edwyn Collins went on to experience some solo success, particularly with his 1994 transatlantic hit "A Girl Like You."
• The song signaled a departure from the sound of the band's earlier post-punk singles, revealing a white-boy funk influence with Chic influenced guitars and a synthesizer. It was the first UK chart hit to feature the Rowland TB – 303 synth, which eventually became synonymous with the Acid House scene.
• The backing vocals were provided by Paul Quinn, a classmate of Collins between the ages of 11 and 15. Quinn went on to front Bourgie Bourgie, a Scottish band who had a #48 UK hit with "Breaking Point" in 1984. He also collaborated with Edwyn Collins on a version of The Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes," which reached #72 in the UK the same year.
• The lyric, "you know the scene and it's very humdrum. And my favorite songs entitled boredom," is a dig at the state of early 1980s Pop, but also a reference to the Buzzcocks, whose debut EP Spiral Scratch was a huge influence on Orange Juice's DIY ethos. A snatch of the guitar riff from the EP's track "Boredom" briefly chimes in after that line.
• An NME review at the time said of the Rip it Up album: "Orange Juice are a minor group trying hard to be bigger and more significant than a really ought to be." The negative appraisal upset Edwin Collins who recalled in 2013: "When Rip It Up got slagged off by the NME, I would refuse to go on the tour bus because I was depressed! You can laugh about it now, but back then it was life and death."
• Rip it Up's saxophone parts were provided by British jazz performer Dick Morrisey, who also featured on material by Paul McCartney, Gary Numan, Peter Gabriel and Vangelis. (He played the haunting saxophone solo on the Vangelis composition "Love Theme" for the 1982 film Blade Runner).
• The critic Simon Reynolds took "Rip It Up" as the title of his 2006 book about the post-punk quest to reinvent pop music: Rip It Up and Start Again.