Album: Half the City (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • St. Paul and The Broken Bones is a seven-piece soul band formed in Birmingham, Alabama in 2012. This is their debut single.
  • Dave Letterman booked St. Paul and the Broken Bones to perform the tune on the January 12, 2015 episode of The Late Show. He enthused about the band before they even played a note. "I'll tell you something, the first time I heard this song," said the talk show host, "I was screaming, 'til I cried. That's what I want: can you do that for me tonight? It won't be your fault, but if I don't get that, I'm gonna stop the show, and do it over!"
  • Letterman asked frontman Paul Janeway why he put a phone number in the lyrics of the song; Janeway replied that it was in tribute to Wilson Pickett's soul classic "634-5789," "But unfortunately, in Birmingham it leads to some sort of hotline."

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