Songfacts®:

• "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth" is a glam rock and art pop ballad that clocks in at just two minutes and 20 seconds. On the face of it, Ron Mael's lyric seems a warning about the consequences of neglecting the environment, but apparently it's about karma.
  
  "We got so many compliments about 'Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth' being pro-environment and pro-ecology," Ron Mael told Mojo magazine. "It wasn't at all. It was never turn your back on mother Earth, or it will whack you."
• Sparks released "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth" as the lead single from their fourth studio album, Propaganda. For the record they reconvened with Muff Winwood, the producer of their previous year's commercial breakthrough, Kimono My House. It peaked at #9 on the UK Albums Chart, Sparks' last Top 10 album until Hippopotamus reached #7 in 2017 and #63 on the Billboard 200, the Mael brothers' highest position in their home country.
• Covers include:
  
  1987 Depeche Mode laid down a take on a single-sided flexi-disc which was sent to members of their official fan club for Christmas.
  
  1989 Depeche Mode's Martin Gore's cover for his Counterfeit solo EP transforms "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth" into a heart-rending love song.
  
  2007 In 1975, Mary Hopkin, her producer husband, Tony Visconti, and Sparks did a take of "Never Turn Your Back" during the Indiscreet sessions, which Ron Mael described as "fantastic." Three decades later, Hopkin revisited the song for her Valentine album.
  
  2009 American alternative country singer-songwriter Neko Case covered the song for her Middle Cyclone album. The lyrics of Middle Cyclone are permeated with natural imagery, especially tornadoes.