Themes and Recording
"Juxtapozed with U" was inspired by the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder track "Ebony and Ivory" as well as the work of Marvin Gaye and Caetano Veloso. The track was originally conceived as a duet, with the band approaching both Brian Harvey from East 17, and Bobby Brown to sing alongside Gruff Rhys. Both turned the band down so Rhys sang the verses through a vocoder to imitate another person, something which he has described as a "very schizophrenic thing to do". Rhys has claimed his lyrics address social injustice and are about "house prices going up, and people being left behind by the super rich". The song has echoes of the Philadelphia soul music of the 1970s as well as David Bowie's "plastic" approximation of the sound on his 1975 album Young Americans. The group tried to make the song as "plastic" as possible: "if we'd tried to make it sound authentic, it would have been awful." According to Rhys the band were keen to challenge people's opinions of them with the track which is a "shocking song, because you can't shock with loud guitars any more" and, as a polished uplifting pop song, is "fairly subversive" when contrasted with the macho guitar music which the band felt was prevalent in 2001. The track was recorded in 2000 at Monnow Valley Studio, Rockfield, Monmouthshire and was produced by the Super Furry Animals and Chris Shaw.
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Famous quotes containing the words themes and/or recording:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)