Ahead of their upcoming best-of collection Hits To The Head, Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos discussed the group’s new single ‘Billy Goodbye’.
Speaking to NME, Kapranos revealed that the track was inspired by celebrating past friendships.
“I was thinking about the idea of friendship and friendships that I’ve had over my life,” Kapranos told the publication.
“They all affect all of us in different ways. Most friendships bring wonderful things into our lives, but not all of them stay the same throughout our lives. They evolve, they change and sometimes friendships end. Sometimes they end badly, but usually, they don’t. Usually, friendships just come to a close.
“Naturally you move in a different direction and you do something different. I think of who my best friends were when I was eight years old or 14-years-old. They’re not necessarily people who I would be best friends with now, but at that age, they meant so much to me, they really defined my life and made me who I was.
“I guess the song is about being able to look at a friendship and say, ‘Ah hey, it’s over – but damn, wasn’t it good? ‘Don’t forget the best bits’. They were pretty incredible’.”
The Franz Ferdinand rocker added, “As you listen to it, there are bits that sound like it’s in 1973 and then immediately jumping to something that could only be made in 2021, and then jumping back and forth between all of them so there’s a feeling of disorientation in time.
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“That’s the way we listen to music nowadays anyway. It’s changed from when I was a kid and you’d buy a seven inch record. That’s just what was available at the time, unless you bought second-hand records.
“Now everything is available to us instantly. We don’t really think of music belonging to a particular time.”
Check out ‘Billy Goodbye’ by Franz Ferdinand:
