Songfacts®:

• Released as the third single from Phantoms, "Less Cities" wasn't successful for The Fixx in the US or their native UK, but it proved to be their biggest hit in Germany.
• Singer and lyricist Cy Curnin explained the song's meaning to us: "It was this sort of nomadic gypsy sense that we had and the way we sit on our couches and wait for the news to come to us instead of going out to find out what's really happening," he said. "That's my anti-soundbite song. Cities that were based on deltas and riches were one thing, but cities that were built on misinformation and supply chains are short lived. So that's what I was saying."
• The Fixx were part of the UK techno-pop movement of the early 1980s but this song's groove had a surprising inspiration. Curnin told us: "Jamie (West-Oram, guitarist) and I were just goofing around in the rehearsal room. In the mornings we would turn up, because we were rehearsing every day. We would say, Let's do something a little bit like this. I may have been listening to a rockabilly track the night before, and I said, 'Man, I really love the way rockabilly moves. Almost like Stray Cats.' We were just talking about that and then Jamie started playing and Adam Woods (drums) joined in and before you know it, I just started spouting my words and it became a Fixx song. We just wanted to get that groove going."
  
  Cy later became good friends with The Stray Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom, and they even went on an expedition where they climbed Mount Everest together. Here's our full Cy Curnin interview.