Songfacts®:

• Vocalist Gaz Coombes wrote this song with drummer Danny Goffey and bassist Mick Quinn. It's about the strange people on Cowley Road, Oxford, a place where the band once lived. Coombes told Q magazine:
  
  "I remember writing it in a little cottage down in the village in Wheatley on two acoustics, me and Mick and I think Danny was, and I remember the time change and how cool we thought it was. It was such a buzz, and the lyrics were great.
  
  I think of Oxford and Cowley Road when I hear those lyrics, going out and scoring a getting some hash and hanging out with either posh students already dodgy dealers, going to the pub and smoking weed and doing too much speed."
• Supergrass recorded the bell chimes that end the song at Carfax Tower in the center of Oxford.
• "I'd Like to Know" is another I Should Coco track about the strange people who live on Cowley Road. In fact, Supergrass were inspired to write "I'd Like To Know" after listening to "Strange Ones" played backwards on a cassette. The band took the sound and penned new lyrics to accompany it.