Song Inspiration
Frontman Kele Okereke talked about the song at some length in his January 2007 The Observer interview, responding to questions as to whether the song had an autobiographical nature:
Not really ... I guess, partially. Yeah, but is it a love story? It's one person longing for somebody they can't really have. But it's not consummated. It's not a mutual thing. ...
This is probably a contentious issue, but I swear that I could always see in people, in the way that guys would need to be touching other guys. You could see there was something they couldn't say aloud. And I saw it when I was at school. And I guess I Still Remember is an attempt at trying to confront that. ... I know from my own experiences a lot of heterosexual boys had feelings or experiences when they were younger. And that's not really ever spoken about, that un-spoken desire. ...
Not two gay boys ... but the idea of two straight boys having an attraction, or there being an attraction that's unspeakable - that was the idea of that song.
Read more about this topic: I Still Remember
Famous quotes containing the words song and/or inspiration:
“They seldom looked happy. They passed one another without a word in the elevator, like silent shades in hell, hell-bent on their next look from a handsome stranger. Their next rush from a popper. The next song that turned their bones to jelly and left them all on the dance floor with heads back, eyes nearly closed, in the ecstasy of saints receiving the stigmata.”
—Andrew Holleran (b. 1943)
“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)