Songfacts®:

• This song is about the inappropriateness of Pop music at funerals. Vocalist Alex Kapranos told NME: "I'd been to a few funerals where inappropriate music was played. You think: 'It might have been their favourite tune, but for everyone that's here it's bloody awful.' So the first line is 'Don't play pop music.'"
• Kapranos expanded on the song's meaning to The Sun: "I read a story about the French ex-president Mitterand's funeral. It was attended by his colleagues, friends, heads of state, his wife, his children and his mistress(es)."
  
  "It made me think of how," continued Kapranos, "as you disappear from this world these people who were so much part of your life are gathered in one place in a way that they never were when you were alive."
  
  "What an opportunity to say a few things to them. I started writing down the things that came into my head: Don't get sentimental and invent virtues that I never had, hope you remember every fight, hope you remember that I loved you – and don't play pop music."
  
  "As the curtains part, " Kapranos concluded, "and I roll away, I don't need to inflict my musical taste on anyone else for one last time."
• The song was produced by Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard.
• Kapranos told Mojo magazine the story of the song: "I was reading an article in the paper about the way politicians' private lives are such a big deal in the UK and nobody gives damn about them in France."
  
  "There was a passing reference made to Francois Mitterand's funeral," he continued, "how his kids were there, heads of state he'd known were there, his wife was there and his mistress, or maybe his mistresses, were there. I loved the image of all these faces peering over into the hole as you disappear from this life, how all these characters have been gathered together in a way they never would be in your lifetime. I thought what a fantastic moment to address them all."