Songfacts®:

• Buster Poindexter was a persona of New York Dolls vocalist David Johansen. Under his Poindexter moniker, Johansen performed a mixture of jazz, lounge, calypso, and novelty songs accompanied by The Uptown Horns.
• This song was initially written and recorded by Montserratian Soca artist Arrow in 1984. Buster Poindexter covered the tune three years later and scored his first hit song. He later complained in an interview with NPR that the tune was "the bane of my existence," due to its long-lasting popularity.
• David Johansen told Mojo how he came to record the tune: "I had been down in the Caribbean doing Buster and we heard that everywhere for a week, and I thought, 'That's a cool song, let's play that when we get home,'" he said. "Then we recorded it and it was a hit."
  
  "I went to my nephew's wedding and they made me sing it - it's excruciating!" Johansen added. "It hardly describes what the rest of the music is about, but you put this thing out there and then people make it what they want it to be for them, and you can't expect anything else."
• Bill Murray features in the music video. The following year, Johansen co-starred with Murray in the 1988 movie, Scrooged.