Colleen

Album: Great Vengeance and Furious Fire (2007)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This tale of a spoiled little girl was inspired by a story Kelvin Swaby saw on the E! entertainment network. The Heavy frontman told us: "There was some kind of little docudrama about some girl that was just obsessed with going shopping. And her mom was footing the bill. And I was watching it almost with my mouth agape, just like, 'Huh? Really? No, you're absolutely – ' and it was just like seriously, wait – do you want that? And at the time I was working on that beat anyway, that (singing) bum bum bum, and so I'm watching it, and then literally I'm there with my son, and so I'm just like, (singing) 'She wants everything, she wants the Gucci and the Louis –' because it's like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Juicy Couture, Canary bling, the canary diamonds. Just super expensive. And this guy was just made to foot the bill, and he was like, 'Oh, I love her, I love her,' and I'm just like, 'No! I don't want that kind of love. I don't know how you could love that kind of love.' But seriously, that isn't love. (laughing) I think by now we've got into this magazine age - the celebrity magazine age - and everybody wants to be like a celebrity. And so whether they're gonna throw themselves into a s--tload of debt, they want to have that lifestyle. These magazines are selling that lifestyle. So it was just kind of mocking that a little bit."
  • There are a bunch of videos for this song, but none of them are official. Swaby explains: "For 'Colleen' we didn't make a video for it. Radar Film Festival in L.A. got in contact with our record company and said, 'We love the song 'Colleen,' can we use it so that all of these budding video directors can make a video to it?' And so they, without us knowing, said yes. Then when some of the entries started coming in, we started getting all these random videos coming in, it was like, What's going on here? It's just crazy, because there weren't a lot of great videos, to be quite honest. And they weren't representative of the song. So we never commissioned any of those videos, I'd just like to put that out there.
    I've seen a lot of them. There's probably about 20. And I think the best one that I've seen is an animated one, it's like a Big Foot, and he's trying to get home to his wife. It's an animated thing. It's like real rough style drawing. But that was probably the best one. That's probably the one that I would say was passable. And I think that was actually the one that won, as well." (Check out our full interview with Kelvin Swaby of The Heavy.)

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Stephen Christian of Anberlin

Stephen Christian of AnberlinSongwriter Interviews

The lead singer/lyricist for Anberlin breaks down "Impossible" and covers some tracks from their 2012 album Vital.

Emilio Castillo from Tower of Power

Emilio Castillo from Tower of PowerSongwriter Interviews

Emilio talks about what it's like to write and perform with the Tower of Power horns, and why every struggling band should have a friend like Huey Lewis.

Art Alexakis of Everclear

Art Alexakis of EverclearSongwriter Interviews

The lead singer of Everclear, Art is also their primary songwriter.

Graham Bonnet (Alcatrazz, Rainbow)

Graham Bonnet (Alcatrazz, Rainbow)Songwriter Interviews

Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai were two of Graham's co-writers for some '80s rock classics.

They Might Be Giants

They Might Be GiantsSongwriter Interviews

Who writes a song about a name they found in a phone book? That's just one of the everyday things these guys find to sing about. Anything in their field of vision or general scope of knowledge is fair game. If you cross paths with them, so are you.

Who's Johnny, And Why Does He Show Up In So Many Songs

Who's Johnny, And Why Does He Show Up In So Many SongsSong Writing

For songwriters, Johnny represents the American man. He has been angry, cool, magic, a rebel and, of course, marching home.