Greek Tragedy

Album: Glitterbug (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The Wombats released this as the second single from Glitterbug, an album inspired by a doomed romance. Lead singer Matthew Murphy explained that after The Wombat's previous record, This Modern Glitch, came out in 2011, he started writing songs about a fictional woman from Los Angeles. Then, in an uncanny coincidence, he ended up dating a woman from LA, strikingly similar to the fictional woman in his tunes. "Meeting my girlfriend allowed me to see LA differently," he told The Sun. "Having a relationship over there meant the character I was writing about came to light. That was the finishing line – I could see how the album wanted to end."

    Murphy wrote this song just after the relationship had ended. He compares their romance to a "Greek Tragedy" – an exhilarating performance that will only end in heartbreak.
  • The gruesome music video was directed by Finn Keenan (The Strypes "She's So Fine") and features Skins star April Pearson as a deranged fan of the band. "We all die in the video," the band told FasterLouder. "So as far as I'm concerned it's the best video ever made – until the one when we all kill each other."
  • In 2021 an Oliver Nelson remix of the song went viral on TikTok. The Swedish producer's reworking of the track was first uploaded to the platform by @lauraserrao followed by users adding videos of them doing their make-up because of the lyric, "You're running late with half your make-up on."

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