7&3 is the Striker's Name

Album: Wake Up The Nation (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • This boisterous track was released for download in December 2009, a few months ahead of English singer-songwriter Paul Weller's tenth solo album, Wake Up The Nation.
  • The song features My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, who also contributed to a second Wake Up The Nation track, "She Speaks." Weller explained to Mojo: "I felt his style of playing would suit those tracks so I called him up." He added in a track-by-track on his website: "He came down to the studio with a big bag of effects pedals and we took it from there." Weller concluded to Q magazine: "He added to that psychedelic thing, but in a modern way."
  • Weller on the song's lyrical content: "There's a dig at the royal family in the lyrics – that whole invisible establishment is still in power, nothing's changed."
  • Kevin Shields told Mojo magazine May 2010 about his collaborations with Weller: "I'd met Paul a few times out and about through mutual friends, and he mentioned a year or two before that we should do something together. Then he just called up and said how he was doing a new album and did I want to come down and try a few things out?
    He guided me on the single 7&3 is the Striker's Name. At first I tried to step back but he was saying, 'Do more chaotic stuff, be more freeform.' I think that's why I was there, that's what he wanted from me on that track. I think he's a lot more experimental and open-minded than people think. He just does things- like the way he made this record, it was very, very spontaneous. There was this 'anything goes' atmosphere and in the short time I was there, really just half a day, so much got done: bass lines got done, vocals were being done in amongst me doing my bits."

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