Franz Ferdinand

Formation (2001–2003)

The band's members played in various bands during the 1990s, including The Karelia, Yummy Fur, 10p Invaders, and Embryo. Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson met at a party and began a close friendship and played together in Yummy Fur, and subsequently teamed up to write songs. Around the same time, Kapranos taught his friend Bob Hardy how to play bass after being given a bass by Mick Cooke of Belle & Sebastian. Kapranos met guitarist Nick McCarthy, who had returned to Scotland after studying jazz bass in Germany, in 2001.

Darts of Pleasure

"Darts of Pleasure" is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand, released as the band's debut single in the United Kingdom on 8 September 2003 through Domino Records. In the United States, it was issued as an extended play (EP).

The song entered the UK Singles Chart at number 44 on 15 September 2003, where it stayed for one week.

Release and reception

"Darts of Pleasure" was released on 8 September 2003. The single was received well with Pitchfork Media giving it a rating of 8.3, calling the single a "bombastically truncated nod to all things indie/electro/new wave. Strikingly Interpolian as they lunge in alongside a healthy drum clip, jagged guitar, and a hardboiled bassline Alex Kapranos' morose-chic vocals are coy but cool." Jon Myer of 6 Music also praised the track, calling it "a great radio record and a great debut."

Michael

"Michael" is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand. It was released as the fourth single from their eponymous debut studio album on 16 August 2004 through Domino Records.

The song was notable for its homoerotic lyrics such as "stubble on my sticky lips" and "beautiful boys on a beautiful dancefloor".

Composition and lyrics

Frontman Alex Kapranos stated in an interview to the UK magazine Boyz that the song was written about two friends of his: "It was one night when me and the band were out with friends from Glasgow, and we went to this warehouse dance party thing called Disco X. It was a very debauched night and these two friends got it together in a very sexy way."

Release

The song was released in the UK on 16 August 2004 as two CD singles and a 7-inch single. Due to a breach of UK chart rules by providing three tracks on the CD2 format instead of two, in what the band described in a press statement as a "silly schoolboy error", sales of the original CD2 format were disqualified. The disc was withdrawn within a day of release, to be replaced by the end of the week by a two-track version, omitting "Tell Her Tonight". This track was released as a free download from Franz Ferdinand and Domino Records' websites from 17 August. Despite this, the single still reached number 17 in the UK and number 39 in Ireland.

Music video

The music video for "Michael" features the band members playing at an underground dance club. A man walks in and studies himself in a mirror, before joining the club. Throughout the video, the occupants are being replayed over and over as like in a short video, and show absolutely no emotion whatsoever, as the band plays. The man dances on the dance floor, but the occupants stare at him with murderous intent, and one sheds a tear, the man realizing that due to him not rewinding over and over, the occupants have found an outcast, or something of a sacrifice. The occupants form a circle around the man, and they tear out the man's arm, which emits a white beam of light, and the occupants stand in a circle as light overtakes them. The final...

Take Me Out

"Take Me Out" is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand. It was released as the second single from their eponymous debut studio album in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2004 and in the United States on 12 April 2004, both through Domino Records.

It was released as 7-inch vinyl, a CD single, and a DVD single with the music video and a short interview with the band.

Background

Franz Ferdinand formed in Glasgow in 2002 and wrote "Take Me Out" the following year. Songwriter Alex Kapranos said the idea for the song's theme came from watching a snipers' duel in the film Enemy at the Gates and that "it felt like a very good metaphor for the kind of romantic situations that we sometimes find ourselves in".

Composition

"Take Me Out" has been described musically as post-punk revival, indie rock, dance-rock, garage rock, and art rock. Its first section is fast tempo guitar driven, with notes of a chord separated into individual notes, which was influenced by Giorgio Moroder, followed by a slower second section with disco hi-hat patterns and snare drums.

Recording

The song was recorded at Gula Studion in Malmö, Sweden with producer Tore Johansson. The tempo changes were recorded live in the studio. The sound of the cymbal being caught as soon as it was hit was influenced by rock music such as Queen. Producer Johansson said: "there was no editing other than that we compiled the best take. We didn't do any tricks of doing that on a different take and then doing the rest of the track." Johansson used multiple echo effects to achieve a "marching, machinery, industrial feel... It's very organic, but we wanted it to sound like you're in a big workshop or something."

Music video

The music video for the song was directed by Jonas Odell. It includes the band amid a Dadaist animation involving quirky vintage figures and machinery reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's cartoon segments for Monty Python. The video is a blend of the live-action band superimposed into a 3D environment with animated 2D elements. Frontman Alex Kapranos described the video's influences as Dada, the films of Busby Berkeley, and Soviet propaganda, and praised Odell's direction. Kapranos commented:

The Dark of the Matinee

"The Dark of the Matinée" is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand. It was released as the third single from their eponymous debut studio album on 19 April 2004.

The song reached number eight on the UK Singles Chart. In Australia, the song was ranked number 50 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004.

Background

The song is about walking home from Bearsden Academy fantasising about a better life in the future, telling Terry Wogan about it on UK national television, then being shaken from the fantasy as its own ridiculousness shatters its very existence. The chorus and title were inspired by bassist Bob Hardy remarking that the dark of a matinée performance was a utopian environment to play in.

Music video

The video features the band dressed as schoolboys, dancing in an automatic, almost possessed, fashion and miming along to the main vocal track. It was inspired by Dennis Potter's television play Blue Remembered Hills (1979), which features adults playing children, and the lip-sync device Potter used in his 'serials with songs' Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986). Another part of the video shows the band dressed in white clothing and standing in front of a large photograph of Terry Wogan (who is namechecked in the song).

This Fire

"This Fire" is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand, the seventh track on their self-titled debut album. It was written by Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy and produced by the band themselves at their studio in Scotland during 2003.

A new version of the song, produced by Rich Costey, was released as a single on 4 October 2004, titled "This Fffire". The single artwork is based on El Lissitzky's art work Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge.

Release and reception

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the song was released as a radio and download single, respectively, reaching number 17 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number eight on the UK Download Chart. In Australia, the song was released as a CD single and reached number 62 on the ARIA Singles Chart. In the same country, it was ranked number 29 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004.

Music video

The music video, directed by Stylewar, echoes the style of 1920s-era Soviet art and propaganda (Constructivism etc.), including Cyrillic lettering, and shows the members of the band spreading a world-wide "hypnosis epidemic".

In popular culture

"This Fire" was featured on the soundtrack for the 2004 racing game Burnout 3: Takedown. The song was later sampled for "Burn This City" by Lil Wayne and Twista. In 2022, the Rich Costey version of the song was selected as the intro song to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in anime from Studio Trigger.

No You Girls

"No You Girls" is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand. It was released as the second single from their third album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand (2009), on 6 April 2009.

The song received worldwide attention after being chosen for use in an iPod advertisement. It charted in several countries, including the UK, where it peaked at number 22, and the U.S., where it peaked at number 106.

Release

"No You Girls" reached #22 in the UK Singles Chart two weeks before its official release, dropped to #24 the next week and then returned to #22 upon its official release. Although it, therefore, did not fulfill its expectations before its physical release, it became the band's second longest lasting single (after "Do You Want To") in the UK Top 100, remaining there for ten weeks. It remains their last song to reach the UK Top 40. Recently the song's intro was used in an episode of the TV show, Fringe, titled "Unleashed" and a part of the chorus was used during a party scene in the 2009 movie Sorority Row.

Music video

The music video was released on Friday 13 March, the same night the band performed it for Comic Relief. The music video itself, directed by Nima Nourizadeh in his final music video to date, features various girls with large dresses dancing around the band while they perform the track, as well as machines spitting out papers with the word "NO" written on them.