Songfacts®:

• XTC lead singer Andy Partridge was in the midst of a nasty divorce when he wrote this angry track with scathing lyrics like "S-H-I- *, is that how you spelled me in your dictionary?"
  
  "It's straightforward anger," Partridge told Daniel Rachel, author of The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters. "Almost the second I'd finished writing the song I thought to myself, 'I feel better about that situation now and we don't necessarily have to record it, but dammit, I should demo it because it's not a bad song, and maybe it'll make a B-side if we're lucky or it'll creep out somewhere or I could use parts of it to write a better song.'"
• Although the song was clearly a shot at his ex-wife ("So let's close the book and let the day begin,
  And our marriage be undone"), Partridge didn't have bad intentions when he wrote it. He told SFGate in 1999: "I didn't write it to hurt. I wrote it to alleviate this incredible backup of pus that was building up in my head. I was a cuckold husband twice over, and me being Mr. Loyal, that was really painful. The song came really quickly, but I had to be cajoled into doing it for the album. I know it's going to hurt terribly. It's not going to hurt me, but it's going to hurt her. I'd like to think that all's well that ends well, but we don't know yet. The s-- is still in midair. It has not struck the fan yet."