Flowers & Football Tops

Album: Glasvegas (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • This track is a reaction to the murder in 2004 of Glasgow teenager Kriss Donald, who was abducted, stabbed thirteen times and then burnt alive. Singer James Allan told Q magazine February 2008: "It happened 10 minutes from where we live. It still haunts me. I had to write a song from his mother's point of view."
  • Allan told The Sun August 15, 2008: "The song came from seeing his mum in the paper and the parents of another murdered child. It was sending me crazy because it was so heartbreaking. You put yourself in the position. What if it was me? What if it was my mum? I would never want my mum to go through what that woman was going through and I was just expressing that in the song. It just came to me one day when I was playing Buddy Holly's 'Love Is Strange.' I was singing that and so my song has a similar melody. I'll probably get sued now because I wanted the same sound."
  • Allan told the Daily Mirror August 8, 2008 that he was disturbed that this song has attracted unwanted 'support' from right-wing extremists. He explained: "I think anybody with half a brain who reads the lyrics to the song will know exactly what it's about. If you are writing about this sort of stuff, there are always going to be people who will take it the wrong way."

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