Songfacts®:

• It appears that Primal Scream chief songwriter and frontman Bobby Gillespie was not over scrupulous in checking facts when penning this song. In this pledge of allegiance to the Black Power movement he wrote and sang "Sister Rosa, Malcolm X and Dr. King showed us we got power. Their bodies may be gone, but their spirits still live on." It is not known how much Rosa Parks was au fait with the British rock group's oeuvre. However as her body was still very much present in 1997, the year this song was written, she might have been surprised to hear that she had passed away along with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
• Jamaican roots reggae producer and keyboardist Augustus Pablo played the melodica on this track. Pablo, who died in 1999, was one of the leading exponents of the instrument and is believed to be the first to use it within a popular music setting. The melodica is a cross between the harmonica and the accordion with a musical keyboard, which is played by blowing air through a mouthpiece. Among other songs that feature the melodica are "And We Danced" by The Hooters and "Do It Again" by Steely Dan.