Fire With Fire

Album: Night Work (2010)
Charted: 11
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the lead single by American pop band Scissor Sisters, from their third studio album, Night Work. The song was co-written and produced by Madonna and The Killers collaborator Stuart Price.
  • This was the first time Scissor Sisters had worked with another producer; and the collaboration saw the group's relationship with Price come full circle after they opened for his band Zoot Woman on their first UK tour in 2004. The hook-up with the Madonna producer came about after the group had ditched an entire album and co lead singer Jake Shears fled to Berlin to get his creative juices flowing again. Female lead singer Ana Matronic told Spinner UK that Shears was able to re-ignite his creativity after a conversation with sometime Berlin resident and Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant. "Neil said, 'Why don't you just call Stuart and see what's going on?' At that point, I think Jake was just looking for a really good friend and a good sounding board to bounce off ideas," Matronic explained.
    Not much later, Shears called up Matronic in New York, who told Spinner UK. "[Jake] was so excited and Stuart was so excited. Stuart said to Jake, 'I would drop everything to make a record with you guys.' So that next weekend, Stuart and Babydaddy were out in Berlin and then a week or two after that, I went to London to work in the studio with them. It was all just this great creative explosion, all caused by Neil Tennant."
  • Guitarist Del Marquis discussed the song's music video with Digital Spy: "We wanted to make a video where we claimed the streets as our own because we'd never really done that before. You know, we've never had as much fun shooting a video. We rode around on the back of that truck for about six hours beginning at 11pm at night. There were drunk people yelling at us, people looking sheepish because they were taking home one night stands and people puking on street corners. It was a real good time, shooting that video!"
  • Shears told Q magazine that writing this song was a liberating experience. He explained; "I was in the studio here in London having a creative crisis. I wasn't just blocked; I thought it was over for us unless something drastic happened. And that song is about overcoming that moment."

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