Songfacts®:

• Suede vocalist and lyricist Brett Anderson spent hours in Highgate library, looking through biographies of old film stars in research for Dog Man Star. This song finds him applying the casting couch syndrome to the seedier side of the music business. He told Suede.co.uk about the track: "I suppose it parallels anyone's rise up the ladder and was an allegory about my experiences in the seedier side of the music business where everyone has to debase themselves to greater or lesser extents in order to succeed. That's just the universal law and you can see it played out every time a band plays a humiliating gig in the back room of a pub to three people, something of which Suede had great experience in the early days."
• The slurred saxophone at the start was Anderson's idea, and added at the mastering stage after Bernard Butler's departure from the band. The frontman explained to Suede.co.uk: "It was intended to convey a distorted journey from bright eyed Hollywood ambition to sleazy compromise."