Songfacts®:

• This anthem to suburban romance sees vocalist and lyricist Brett Anderson desperate to convince himself that there's an escape from council estate gloom. He recalled to Q magazine April 2011: "I had this schoolboy-ish idea to sneak an overtly sexual song with the framework of pop. I was amazed it got daytime radio play, considering the title is a play on amyl nitrite. To me, it's set in suburbia, in a council estate in Haywards Heath. I was brought up as a white, working-class English boy, and that's what I wrote about. If you're born in a dump you aspire to something better."
• Amyl nitrite is employed medically to treat heart diseases such as angina and also to treat cyanide poisoning. It is also used as an inhalant drug that induces a brief euphoric state, and when combined with other intoxicant stimulant drugs such as cocaine or ecstasy, the euphoric state intensifies and is prolonged. However, its use as a recreational drug is risky as once its effects have worn off, a common side effect is a period of depression or anxiety.
• The song was originally called "Dixon." Anderson explained to Q magazine: "The working title was Dixon, because we all thought it sounded like the theme from (BBC TV series) Dixon Of Dock Green. I think Bernard (Butler) wrote the music for this quite early on but I couldn't crack a really good vocal melody or lyric, so I sat on it for a while."
• Pedro Romhanyi directed the video, which caused some controversy when it was banned for its depiction of two men engaging in a kiss.
• Brett Anderson explained the story behind the song to NME May 11, 2013: "The idea for 'Animal Nitrate' came when I was going through a period when drugs were taking the place of people. Sex was just a hollow, vacuous thing which was made full and three-dimensional by the fact that I was taking a huge amount of drugs. It wasn't actually anything to do with amyl nitrate, it was other sorts of drugs - coke, ecstasy. My mind was in a stormy period, I was going quite insane.
  "It definitely has a veneer (of gay sex) but there's a very sad undertone," he added. "People think about gay sex and never really think about it romantically. They see sadness, romance and loss as purely a hetrosexual thing. There's a definite domestic violence feel to 'Animal Nitrate.' But behind that there's a real sadness."