Songfacts®:

• This song finds Johnny Marr raging about dirty money and greed over a catchy melody. "I like the idea of sneaking a serious concern into the mainstream, disguised as a big pop tune," he told Rolling Stone. "The riff was so catchy and infectious that I wanted it to be about something that appeared to be trite but was actually quite universal."
  
  "Money is a preoccupation of everybody, and it took me quite a long time to write something that appeared to be simple. If you were to ask anybody in the City [London's equivalent to Wall Street] what they're after, essentially the root of it is money," he continued. "It's the age-old thing of people thinking that it will make us happy."
• The lead single from Playland, it was Marr's exercise to see if he could write a deliberately commercial song. He used the album's most salable track to say something about our collective pursuit of cash. "I wanted to lampoon know why we are about money," he told NME, "because I'm wondering if we are not even noticing how much were chasing after it and how much we need it."
  
  "However, halfway through writing, I realized that there were so many people in society for whom money is not something to be lampooned, so I wanted to finish a song with a slightly different attitudes," Marr continued. "That's why I mentioned people who make money on the streets, whether it's homelessness or prostitution; and I had a bit of a dig about tuition fees again."
  
  "It was a good balance between making fun of us all, and having a bit of respect," he concluded. "It's slightly political, but without being overt."
• Johnny Marr admitted to NME that he did think this song "was too pop," but he added that he wrote it, "as a celebration of the culture, so it's right, it sounds like it does."