Michael (Franz Ferdinand song)

Frontman Alex Kapranos stated in an interview to the UK magazine Boyz that the song was written about two friends of his: "It was one night when me and the band were out with friends from Glasgow, and we went to this warehouse dance party thing called Disco X. It was a very debauched night and these two friends got it together in a very sexy way."[1]

Reviewer Alexis Petridis praised the song's "intriguing combination of sly humour and bug-eyed lust, as if the song's central character started camping it up for a laugh and ended up in rather deeper water than he had anticipated...You simply don't get songs like Michael very often in current rock music."[2]

The song was released in the UK on 16 August 2004 as two CD singles and a 7-inch single.[3] Due to a breach of UK chart rules by providing three tracks on the CD2 format instead of two, in what the band described in a press statement as a "silly schoolboy error", sales of the original CD2 format were disqualified. The disc was withdrawn within a day of release, to be replaced by the end of the week by a two-track version, omitting "Tell Her Tonight". This track was released as a free download from Franz Ferdinand and Domino Records' websites from 17 August.[4] Despite this, the single still reached number 17 in the UK and number 39 in Ireland.[5][6]

The music video for "Michael" features the band members playing at an underground dance club. A man walks in and studies himself in a mirror, before joining the club. Throughout the video, the occupants are being replayed over and over as like in a short video, and show absolutely no emotion whatsoever, as the band plays. The man dances on the dance floor, but the occupants stare at him with murderous intent, and one sheds a tear, the man realizing that due to him not rewinding over and over, the occupants have found an outcast, or something of a sacrifice. The occupants form a circle around the man, and they tear out the man's arm, which emits a white beam of light, and the occupants stand in a circle as light overtakes them. The final scenes show the bands with multiple limbs. Alex Kapranos has three arms and a double-sided guitar, Nick McCarthy has two heads, Bob Hardy has four arms and two stomachs, and Paul Thomson also has three arms and plays the drum with three sticks.

The song was recorded alternatively in May 2004 in Hamburg, Germany, as a duet, and it was originally intended for release as a single. Without changing the lyrics, the reworked track was meant to take the perspective of a male love interest and female love interest fighting over Michael. Catriona Shaw of the band Queen of Japan provided the female vocals of this version of the track. In the end the band felt that the homoerotic undertones of the song became too diluted, so decided not to use it for the release of the track as a single and stuck with the original album version.[7]

• The re-issue of CD2 omits "Tell Her Tonight".[10]

• Listen to "Michael" on YouTube