Money

Album: Happy People (2014)
Charted: 66
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Harry Koisser asking, "Money, do you need it?" while referencing the digital currency bitcoin. He told NME about the citation of the fashionable peer-to-peer payment system: "I wasn't searching for a relevant reference," Koisser said. "It just came out when I was writing. I wasn't like, 'Oh, I gotta write about something current,' otherwise I would talk about horsemeat. Which isn't on the album, unfortunately."
  • Harry Koisser was determined not to write a love song or a song about himself, which is when the money theme struck him. "I realized I wasn't born into it, and I still don't have it," he said. "As a song it just seemed to work. It's not negative, bitter or whiney."
  • The song was debuted live at the band's Shepherd's Bush Empire shows in December 2013.
  • The music video was directed by Ninian Doff, with the band making a cameo as Wall Street bankers.
  • Harry Koisser came up with the track while the band was on tour in Australia. Working with Logic Pro software, he started with a drum loop, then added some chords. He then called up the virtual keyboard on the program and mashed his hands on it, which created a surprisingly interesting sound.
  • The band recorded this song at SARM Studios in London in what was going to be a rehearsal of the song. When their producer, Jim Abiss, heard them working on it, he had them record the drums. This went well, so they kept going and recorded the whole song. This was a nice treat for the record label, who got the song ahead of schedule and decided it should be the first single.
  • This was the first song Peace recorded for Happy People. The lyrical content was inspired by their surroundings when they were touring America. "I had an English teacher who used to bang on about the American Dream the time - Death of a Salesman and all that - then you realize when you're in the US what it's all about," Koisser explained to NME. "I'm not, like 'Money's evil' but it causes a lot of problems."

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