Songfacts®:

• This was the first single to be released by Primal Scream following the departure of bassist Mani, who rejoined The Stone Roses in 2011. Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine initially replaced Mani, before Simone Butler was installed as his permanent successor. The track also features My Bloody Valentine frontman, Kevin Shields on guitar.
• Released on the band's own First International label through Ignition Records, the song was written by Primal Scream vocalist Bobby Gillespie and rhythm guitarist Andrew Innes, and it finds Gillespie sings about the "21st century underclass" and teenage revolution."
• The song finds Primal Scream setting out their discontent with modern culture in a forthright manner. "We're living in extreme times and if you listened to modern rock music you wouldn't know that," Gillespie told The Guardian. "I just think it's odd there's no protest, resistance or critique of what's going down. It's like people are tranquilised. All the rights people had fought for – people like trade unionists, anarchists, artists – are being clawed back by extremists. These people [in charge] aren't rational thinkers. Someone like (London mayor) Boris Johnson hides behind that bumbling public schoolboy image but he's a sinister rightwing c--t trying to bring in anti-strike legislation... we've got to fight these f---ing people!"
• We hear Gillespie urging us to "remember Robespierre" - the left-wing French revolutionary leader. The Primal Scream singer told Mojo magazine the insertion of the late 18th century figure with an itchy guillotine finger was a joke. "There are loads of things we put in songs that we think are funny but people don't get it," he said.
• Gillespie explained the lyric, "What happened to the voices of dissent? Getting rich I guess," to NME: "You get people like Tracey Emin doing well in the art world," he said. "She was born into a social democracy and she's the same sort of age as me. This isn't an attack on Tracey Emin, I'm just using her as an example of somebody who has done well in the arts and whose way was paid throughout school by the state, who then goes, 'I'm gonna vote Tory and I'm gonna leave the country if Labour get in."