Songfacts®:

• In this song, the band is addressing a groupie, who is the "fox on the run." Apparently she's had more than one go with the band, as Sweet frontman Brian Connolly sings that she doesn't look the same - probably a bit more worn from her lifestyle. He also makes it clear that he has no interest in hearing her talk and certainly doesn't want to know her name.
• Sweet was produced by the glam rock architects Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, who also wrote most of their songs, including all of their hits to this point. "Fox On The Run" was written by the band - Brian Connolly, Stephen Priest, Andrew Scott, Michael Tucker - and included on their 1974 album Desolation Boulevard.
  
  After the album was released, the band parted ways with Chapman and Chinn and produced their own material. Their first effort was a reworking of "Fox On The Run," which was originally helmed by Chapman/Chinn. Defying predictions of disaster, Sweet proved quite capable on their own, and the new version of "Fox," with a bright chorus and bold echo, became a global hit, reaching #2 UK and charting across Europe (it was #1 in Germany, where Sweet was wildly popular). It also became one of the few American hits for the band when it was released in the US as the follow-up to their single "Ballroom Blitz."
• Manfred Mann released a completely different song called "Fox On The Run" in 1968, which made #5 UK and #97 US. Their song has a different lyrical theme: it's about feeling like a fox on the run after his girl leaves him.
  
  You can't copyright a title, but Tony Hazzard, who wrote the Manfred Mann song, thought it was bad form. "'Fox On The Run' is such a distinctive title that any writer worth his or her salt would leave well alone," he said in his Songfacts interview. "They even copied the rising harmonies! As you might gather, I didn't think much of it."
• Although "Fox On The Run" is officially credited to the entire band, in reality, it was Sweet guitarist Andy Scott's pet project.
  
  "Those lyrics were hastily written in the pub before recording the song for the album," Scott told Classic Rock. "That's why it never got a proper final verse. We swore we'd rewrite it when we re-recorded the song - but, of course, we never did."
• Scott, eager to flex his muscles as a budding producer, took charge of the session - though the record label still stamped "Produced by Sweet" on the credits. His main objective? To polish the track for radio. But in the process, he ended up adding a small but game-changing element.
  
  "The rest of the band had gone to the pub when I incorporated that pulse-type synthesizer sound at the start and stuck it onto the end as well," he remembered. "Everyone loved it."
• The song topped the charts in several countries, including Australia, South Africa and West Germany.
• "Fox On The Run" has been covered by a string of artists, including:
  
  1975 Scorpions. The German rock band covered the song as "Fuchs geh' voran," which features lyrics about a fox being chased by hunters.
  1988 Girlschool, for their Sha-Boom album.
  2002 John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed a live cover in Madrid.
  2009 Ace Frehley for his Anomaly album.
  2010 The Academy Is…for the When In Rome soundtrack.
  2017 The Replacements. A live version is included on For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986.
• "Fox on the Run" features in the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The trailer was released in 2016, ahead of the movie's premiere in May 2017. It generated such a surge in online sales that the song topped the iTunes Top 40 US Rock Song chart in late 2016.