Songfacts®:

• "Ladytron" depicts a love affair between Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry and a female robot, with Ferry taking on the role of a seductive Casanova:
  
  Lady if you want to find a lover
  Then you look no further
  For I'm gonna be your only
  
  The "tron" part of the song title is also said to be a play on "Mellotron," the electromechanical instrument heard throughout "Ladytron."
• This song begins with an eerie, barren stretch of instrumental music. Synthesizer player Brian Eno and saxophonist Andy Mackay came up with this section after Ferry requested an introduction that sounded like the moon. Ferry explained to NME: "'Ladytron' is a sort of sci-fi lunar landscape with the oboe playing what I call 'The Haunted Landscape Theme' before I come in singing like a cowboy with castanets."
• Roxy Music made their television debut performing this song on BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test on June 28, 1972. Before the performance, the show's presenter, "Whispering Bob" Harris, disparagingly referred to the band as "a triumph of style over substance." Despite this slight, the performance is now considered one of the best in the history of The Old Grey Whistle Test.
• When Roxy Music performed this song live, it often collapsed into a chaotic, improvisational instrumental breakdown. According to guitarist Phil Manzanera, they achieved this effect by Eno taking the signal from the guitar and plugging it into his synthesizer. Speaking to Mojo, Manzanera recalled: "Onstage the rhythm would stop and then go off in any direction that occurred."
• The British electronic band Ladytron is named after this song. Brian Eno was a big fan of the quartet, whose hits include "Destroy Everything You Touch." He told Sydney Opera House: "Ladytron are, for me, the best of English pop music."
• In 1998, Mackay and a supergroup of British musicians, including Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, and Suede's Bernard Butler, recorded a cover of this song for the Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine. Performing under the name The Venus In Furs, Mackay and company also covered "2HB" and "Bitter Sweet." In an interview with Uncut, Mackay said: "It was funny. I hadn't played 'Ladytron' for 20 years, but it came back remarkably easy. Other stuff I'd completely forgotten."
• "Ladytron" appears on Roxy Music's self-titled debut album. The front cover features a sprawling pin-up photograph of Kari-Ann Muller, a British model who went on to marry Mick Jagger's younger brother, Chris. Muller also graces the front cover of Mott the Hoople's seventh album, 1974's The Hoople.