My Favourite Game

Album: Gran Turismo (1998)
Charted: 14
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, written by Cardigans Nina Persson and Peter Svensson, a woman is distraught over the end of her relationship. Her "favorite game" is love, and she is losing.
  • The album is named after the PlayStation racing game Gran Turismo. In the game's sequel, Gran Turismo 2, this plays at the opening. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Bertrand - Paris, France, for above 2
  • The music video was directed by Jonas Åkerlund (Madonna's "Ray of Light," U2's "Beautiful Day," Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi"). It was filmed over a three-day shoot in the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California. We see Cardigans vocalist Nina Persson drive a 1974 Cadillac Eldorado convertible in the clip. She recalled to NME in a December 2013 interview: "It was amazing – the weather was really hot and the car was super-hot. I did try to drive it a couple of metres but that shoot was surrounded by crazy security and insurance matters, so mostly the car is sitting on a truck and I am pretend driving. When you see the whole car it's a stunt woman driving it."
  • The group recorded this album in producer Tore Johansson's "Country Hell" studio outside of Malmo, Sweden. Johansson opted to use a Digidesign Pro Tools 24 system to record the album which he hoped would help achieve a "heavier, tighter sound" - but it nearly backfired. He told Sound on Sound: "I wasn't used to working with computers, and one morning, halfway through the recording, I couldn't find the music. Finally I found it hidden on a hard disk, but it was a couple of scary hours!"
  • This song was featured on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Roswell and the movie Body Shots (1999).
  • Nina told Exclaim! about a spooky guest who was on set for this video: "In our video for 'My Favourite Game,' one of the stuntmen was the man who played Jason (Kane Hodder) in the Friday the 13th movies. When I was a teenager, I was really obsessed with horror movies, so that was something that I really felt strongly about. He showed me his tattoo, which was on the inside of his lower lip: 'KILL.' I was very impressed."

    Hodder was one of several actors to play Jason Voorhees. He donned the hockey mask for four of the films: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) and Jason X (2001).
  • The band admitted there was a lot of petty fighting going on between them during the recording Gran Turismo. Nina conceded she was "grumpy as hell" when she first heard this song. "When Peter first played it, I thought 'that sounds like crap' and I walked out," she told BBC News.

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