Songfacts®:

• Edwyn Collins is a Scottish musician who came to fame as frontman of the post-punk band Orange Juice. They had a UK hit with "Rip It Up" in 1983. Collins went solo in 1986, and in 1994 released his most famous song: "A Girl Like You."
  
  The song finds Collins in an encounter with a woman who makes a biblical impact on him. He made up the story - Collins says it's about "a mythical girl."
• There are a lot of crazy musical elements going on in this song. Collins started with a guitar riff redolent of the Sex Pistols song "Holidays In The Sun." His engineer then ran it through a sampler, which created what sounds like someone talking into a guitar.
  
  He added some jangly guitar and a vibraphone played by Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, then in the bridge added lots of vocal harmonies. At the end of the song, a singer named Vic Godard takes it home with the line "Yeah, it's alright" repeated over Collins' heavily fuzz-toned guitar.
  
  It all adds up to a song that sounds both retro and modern, and also a bit dangerous.
• The drum track, including that booming intro, is sampled from Len Barry's 1965 hit "1-2-3." Collins used the sample because it was easier than enlisting a live drummer. This ended up being a costly decision when he had to "pay through the nose" to clear it. When he was recording the song, Collins didn't think it would be a hit, so it wasn't worried about using the sample.
• Edwyn Collins wrote and produced the song himself. "I wrote it at home, then West Heath Yard studio," he told Mojo. "In 48 hours, I cracked it."
• Originally, the song was "a kind of Stooges number," a "more thrashy kind of guitar thing" before evolving into its final, more polished form.
  
  That Stooges/Iggy Pop influence you'll hear on the bridge when Collins does the "You've made me acknowledge the devil in me" part.
• The song was used in these movies:
  
  Goodnight Mommy (2022)
  Is This Sexual Harassment? (2019)
  Bachelorette (2012)
  Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
  Cathouse (2002)
  The Closer You Get (2000)
  Unwed Father (1997)
  Never Talk To Strangers (1995)
  Empire Records (1995)
  
  And these TV shows:
  
  The Crown ("No Woman's Land" - 2022)
  Ted Lasso ("Beard After Hours" - 2021)
  Car Share ("The Unscripted Special" - 2018)
  Newton's Law ("External Forces" - 2017)
  Lucifer ("Sweet Kicks" - 2016)
  The Block ("Meet Our New Blockheads" - 2015)
  Alba ("1995" - 2014)
  My Mad Fat Diary ("Inappropriate Adult" - 2014)
  Femme Fatales ("Speed Date" - 2011)
  Being Erica ("Mama Mia" - 2009)
  Cold Case ("Rampage" - 2006)
  Spin City ("The Commitments" - 2002)
  Cleopatra 2525 ("Run Cleo Run" - 2002)
  Renford Rejects ("One of the Guys" - 1998)
  Lost In Music ("Deep In Dub" - 1997)
  Malibu Shores ("Hotline" - 1996)
  Dalziel & Pascoe ("A Clubbable Woman" - 1996)
• In America, "A Girl Like You" was the only Edwyn Collins song to chart, reaching #32. He had a few other chart entries in the UK, where most of his fanbase is located.
  
  Collins suffered a devastating stroke in 2005 that nearly killed him at age 45, but he eventually recovered and was able to perform again in 2007.
• "A Girl Like You" sounds like it would fit right into the movie Pulp Fiction, which was also released in 1994, but it's not. If you have a false memory of it being in the film, you're probably thinking of the Urge Overkill version of "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon."
• Collins has nothing against Polish singers. The line is: "Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs."