Songfacts®:

• By 1976 David Essex's career had reached a crossroads. He'd achieved the #1 singles and the sell-out tours, but was feeling unfulfilled by the pop music he was spawning. The singer considered packing the whole thing in and returning to his first love of musical theatre and rock. This song reflected his state of mind at the time.
  
  "I was just feeling sort of, 'who needs all this old crap. No one is particularly taking me seriously; perhaps you shouldn't be taking it seriously.' So I was feeling a bit like knocking it on the head," he told Melody Maker.
  
  "This was all around the time of 'City Lights'. There was a lot of aggression in that song. I had already thought 'b------- ' and I was proved right, because the BBC played it six times. I was being voted the number one singer in a lot of polls and the BBC played the record six times. It shot in at 24 and came out again, so I was right about what was going on. I was right about the total indifference to me. I thought, you know, 'they might like this,' and it was greeted with total indifference."