Songfacts®:

• "Have A Nice Day" is a narrative of a true story. And yes, it's laced with sarcasm.
  
  Stereophonics are from Wales and are very popular in the UK. When they were touring America in 1999 they had a gig in San Francisco, where they got the very American experience of taking a taxi ride with a surly driver.
  
  On the Decade in the Sun: Best of Stereophonics DVD, lead singer Kelly Jones told the story: "The taxi driver said, 'I hate this place. It's for tourists and processed fish.' Then he kept on talking, saying that he was a poet and he believed that everybody in the world had become exactly the same: we all dressed the same and looked the same. The only thing that we've got that's different is our accents. He said he was writing a poem called 'Corporate Communism,' so he just kept ranting and raving. Then he dropped us off and he said, 'That'll be seven bucks. Have a nice day.' I didn't know if I was paying for the ride or the stories, so I nicked it."
• This song was used in the 2004 movie Dawn of the Dead, and also in episodes of The Naked Chef and Veronica Mars. It was included on the soundtrack of the 2002 season of the show Roswell.
• The music video for "Have A Nice Day" is quite memorable, with 21 beautiful, largely undressed women surrounding the band. Bass player Richard Jones and drummer Stuart Cable are playing their instruments, but lead singer Kelly Jones is strapped upright to a rotating disc that looks like a target, as if he's the unfortunate assistant to a knife thrower. At times, the models turn ugly, as if there's a glitch in the Matrix.
  
  Kelly Jones wrote the treatment for the video, which is what you would expect a 26-year-old bloke who likes the ladies to design. He wanted to make the video "appealing for the gentlemen watching," but he did have some artistic touchstones for inspiration: the sleeve photo for the UK version of the Jimi Hendrix album Electric Ladyland (which explains the girls), and the 1980 Clint Eastwood movie Bronco Billy, which is where the rotating disc comes in.
• "Have A Nice Day" was the second single from the third Stereophonics album, Just Enough Education To Perform, following "Mr. Writer." Both songs were big hits in their native UK and expanded their fanbase outward a bit. Despite the San Francisco setting for "Have A Nice Day," the song didn't catch on in America, where Stereophonics were largely relegated to college radio.