Songfacts®:

• They can't hear a word we've said
  When we pretend that we're dead
  
  Written by L7 frontwoman Donita Sparks, this song is a call to action, making the point that doing nothing is exactly what the powers-that-be want from their opposition.
  
  What was the band fighting for? For one thing, the war in Iraq (which they cover in another Bricks Are Heavy track, "Wargasm"), but also reproductive rights. Around this time, they formed an organization called Rock For Choice in an effort to combat the anti-abortion push of the George H. W. Bush administration. Supporters in L7's effort included Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
• The murmured "Come on, come on, come on, come on" vocals were done by the band's drummer, Demetra Plakas.
• The B-side of the single is a song called "S--tlist," which Oliver Stone used in his movie Natural Born Killers as the theme for the sociopathic character Mallory Knox, played by Juliette Lewis.
• This is one of the more accessible songs L7 delivered, and was their biggest hit, reaching #8 on the American Alternative Songs chart and #21 on the UK Singles chart.
• When L7 performed this on the British TV show The Word in 1992, near the end of the song Donita Sparks took off her pants, causing quite a stir in the UK press.
• Donita Sparks sat in her Echo Park apartment staring at the blank page in front of her. She had been trying to write lyrics for a new song, but she was struggling. Her heart was heavy with sorrow, and she couldn't seem to find the words to express her pain.
  
  She had recently gone through a painful breakup, and she was still trying to come to terms with it. She felt like her whole world had been turned upside down, and she didn't know how to move on.
  
  Sparks took a deep breath and tried to focus on the task at hand. She closed her eyes and thought about the breakup. She remembered all the good times they had shared, and all the pain that had come after. As she thought about it, a phrase came to her mind: "I just pretend that you're dead."
  
  "I was going through a very difficult breakup - it was so time-consuming and frustrating that I was like, 'OK, I've just got to pretend they're dead.' I didn't want that person dead, it was just the way I could cope," she recalled to Uncut magazine. "After a couple of days, I was like, 'Oh, pretend we're dead - now that's a cool lyric.'"
  
  "There was horrible apathy going on with politics in the United States and people not voting," Sparks continued. "We had Reagan all those years, and then the first President Bush. It was scary times; they were clamping down on civil liberties. So, it was a call to action for people to wake up and smell the coffee, because bad stuff can happen. I suppose I was trying to inspire without being preachy."
• "Pretend You're Dead," was co-produced by Butch Vig and L7 themselves. Vig was hot at the time after his high-profile production work in 1991 for The Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Nirvana's Nevermind.
  
  "We spent a lot of time on the overdubs for 'Pretend We're Dead,'" he recalled to Uncut magazine. "For some reason I kept hearing a reference to Tommy James' 'Crimson And Clover,' so we decided to add tremolo guitars and lots of ear candy and psychedelic effects to the track."
• The band faced various challenges associated with the Modi Frank-directed video for "Pretend We're Dead," including a crane failure that injured co-vocalist and guitarist Suzi Gardner. "The video shoot was a s--t show," Sparks told Uncut. "The director wanted to try this shot with Suzi lying on the floor. The crane was not fastened securely, and it came crashing down and hit Suzi right on her cheekbone. It could have been way worse. But it was bad- the shoot was canceled and she had to have surgery. When we reconvened (my ideas) were being dismissed by the director. I had to put my foot down. It was a bummer, but it turned out cool."