Album: Too-Rye-Ay (1981)
Charted: 58
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Songfacts®:

  • Dexys Midnight Runners' final single for EMI , this was the first to feature the band's new lineup. Kevin Rowland recalled to The Guardian: "One day, five band members announced they wanted to go their own way, as Dexys, and get a different singer. At first I was relieved. All that stress just went. Then after a couple of days I thought: 'F--k that! It's my band name!' and started to get another band together around myself, Jim (Paterson) and Kevin Archer. Then Kevin left, too, because he was disillusioned. I said to Jim: 'We need to write,' and he started coming round to my flat."

    "This is one of the first we wrote together," Rowland added. "I think we had the intro first. 'You've always been searching for something...' I'd met this fan, a really nice girl who came and told me how much that first Dexys album meant to her. I really connected with that, but nothing was ever enough. Although success had left me empty, I'd see these other people on Top of the Pops and think: 'F--king hell...' So after that we went all out to be successful."
  • The expression 'Plan B,' meaning an alternative strategy or another option, derives from military jargon.
  • The song references Bill Withers and his 1972 classic hit "Lean On Me." ("Bill Withers was good for me, pretend I'm Bill and lean on me.")
  • The song was re-recorded for the Too-Rye-Ay album with "Soon," the B-side to Dexys' single "Show Me," tagged on as an uncredited intro.

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