Songfacts®:

• This was a working title that stuck because the band felt that Shakespeare's Richard III, which is a very dark play, matched the menacing tone of the song. Richard III himself is not mentioned in the lyrics and has nothing to do with this number.
  
  "With a lot of the songs, before they had lyrics, we were naming them like kids: Susan, David, Gary," singer Gaz Coombes told Uncut magazine. "This was Richard."
  
  I Should Coco's threatening track "Lenny" may be another Supergrass song where they kept the working title.
• Lyrically, this boisterous and punchy track finds Gaz Coombes harking back to his teenage days in his local city of Oxford. "That one for me was the trials and tribulations of being a teenager," he told Uncut. "Waking up and feeling a bit s--t, but then attacking the day."
• Released on March 31, 1997, "Richard III" peaked at #2 on the UK singles chart, stuck behind R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." "Alright" also reached the runner-up spot, but Supergrass never achieved that elusive UK chart-topper.
• Supergrass recorded the song for their second album, In It for the Money, at Sawmills Studio in Cornwall with producer John Cornfield. The LP was Cornfield's first production job with a major artist after working as a sound engineer or sound assistant on records by Stone Roses, Robert Plant and Cast. Supergrass must have liked him, as they recruited Cornfield to help them produce their self-titled third album two years later.