Songfacts®:

• Siouxsie Sioux explained in an MTV interview that this song is about "the way that women are portrayed in our Fascist media." She stated that "Peekaboo" is a reaction against the conformist images that the media puts on women and equates it to The Stepford Wives film. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Thomas - Marion, IN
• The lyrics near the end of the song that start: "Golly jeepers, where'd you get those peepers?" are based on the 1938 standard "Jeepers Creepers." Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, who wrote "Jeepers Creepers," received songwriting credit for "Peekaboo" as a result.
• In a 2008 interview with The Word, Siouxsie and the Banshees producer Mike Hedges explained the unusual backing track: "It all started a year or so before, when the Banshees made an album of cover versions called Through The Looking Glass. On that album they'd recorded a version of a John Cale song called 'Gun,' and when we were recording it I turned it over – which you can do on analogue tape – and it sounded amazing. We recorded forward drums over the backwards track – crunchy and loopy, kind of hip-hoppy. Then we added accordion and bass, although there's only one piece of bass on the entire track. It was all very quick. From turning the tape over it probably took the best part of a day and a half to finish the song.
  
  Siouxsie always came up with ideas very fast, and once the backing track was done she created the melody and lyrics incredibly quickly. She's very spontaneous. So 'Peekaboo' was originally a John Cale song! It was one of the most experimental things I did at the time that actually worked. The Banshees were very, very experimental, and at that time in the music business you could be experimental. There was no pressure to do anything in a straight style, which isn't really the case any more."
• When Billboard debuted their Modern Rock Tracks chart on September 10, 1988, this was the #1 song. At the time, playlists from a select group of college and progressive radio stations determined the chart.