Songfacts®:

• The Last Dinner Party, those purveyors of theatricality and catchy tunes, are back at it with "Caesar on a TV Screen." The track, inspired by Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (though more by the ambition than the, you know, stabbing bits), finds the band in familiar territory - blending rock and pop with a generous helping of flamboyant flair.
  
  Imagine, if you will, Caesar himself, not lounging in a toga but sprawled across a plush sofa, mesmerized by the flickering light of a television. Our boy Julius Caesar is having delusions of grandeur of the decidedly modern variety, fueled by the flickering images and the promise of universal adoration.
• Lead singer Abigail Morris, perhaps pre-empting the inevitable music press fawning, sings:
  
  And just for a second
  I can be one of the greats
  I'll be Caesar on a TV screen
  Champion of my fate
  No one can tell me to stop
  I'll have everything I want
  Anyone and everyone will like me then
  Everyone will like me then
  
  "I wrote the beginning of this song over lockdown," Morris explained to Apple Music. "I'd stayed over with my boyfriend at the time and then, to go back home, he lent me a suit. When I met him, I didn't just find him attractive, I wanted to be him - he was also a singer in another band and he had this amazing confidence and charisma in a specifically masculine way. Getting to have his suit, I was like, 'Now I am a man in a band.'
  
  It's this very specific sensuality and power you feel when you're dressing as a man. I sat at the piano and had this character in my head - a Mick Jagger or a Caligula. I thought it would be fun to write a song from the perspective of feeling like a king, but you are only like that because you're so vulnerable and so desperate to be loved and quite weak and afraid and childlike."
• The Last Dinner Party recorded "Caesar On A TV Screen" for their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy. They laid down the 12 tracks at The Church Studios in Crouch Hill, London, with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine, Foals).
• James Ford played the drums for all the Prelude to Ecstasy tracks except "Caesar On A TV Screen," where the rhythmic duties fell to The 1975's touring drummer, Rebekah Rayner.
• The accompanying video, directed by Harv Frost, takes the Shakespearean inspiration and runs with it, transforming the band into full-fledged Roman rock stars in a campy rock musical setting. It's all big hair, dramatic poses, and enough eyeliner to make Cleopatra blink.