Poison Ivy

Album: Lines, Vines and Trying Times (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This tune about a beautiful but dangerous girl is one of a number of tracks on Lines, Vines and Trying Times that features a horn section. Singer Joe Jonas explained to Rolling Stone that this new sound was inspired by a British band that the brothers came across in 2008. Said Joe: "We were really inspired by the Zutons. We heard their new record, You Can Do Anything, when we were in Europe last year and got everyone around us hooked on it." Joe added that the brothers kept adding horns to more and more tracks: "The horns just keep sounding good! The players are these amazing Minneapolis cats who have been doing it for years and are just unreal." (Check out The Zutons track "What's Your Problem")
  • Back in 1959 the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote a song with the same title for The Coasters. Both songs employ the same pretty girl-as-irritant metaphor.
  • The brothers penned this with their bass player Greg Garbowsky, who also co-wrote their hit single "Tonight."

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