The Boxer (The Chemical Brothers song)

When the Chemical Brothers started to write music again after finishing the album Come with Us (2002), "The Boxer" was one of the earliest tracks they composed for their next album, Push the Button (2005).[1] The Charlatans' lead singer Tim Burgess, who had collaborated on the duo's debut album track "Life Is Sweet" 10 years earlier, contributed the song's vocals. According to the group, of all their collaborators, Burgess remained a close friend. They shared that, "If he's in London, we would probably have a drink together, three of us, or, you know, when we're in Los Angeles, he will come to our gig."[1]

Originally, the song's chorus was "set in stone," but the Chemical Brothers asked Burgess to sing it and write some additional lyrics.[1] They also wanted him to sing the vocals at the end of the track—lyrics like "I'm a hustler, I'm a tiger"—in the same vocal style he used earlier in his career, which Burgess himself described as "weedy and soft".[5][6] The duo said that the resulting vocal sounds very different from the one on their previous collaboration.[1] The Guardian's Alexis Petridis described it as having a "standard-issue mid-Atlannick accent".[6]

Astralwerks released a statement describing the song as a combination of the duo's signature psychedelic pop sound and "modern stabs".[3] Its production was built on a "ramshackle", slightly off-tempo piano sample set above a looping mid-tempo rhythm. PopMatters Tim O'Neil described it as "syncopated" and "slightly light-headed". He also noted the duo's different style on the track compared with their previous records.[4] Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork Media commented that the song along with "Galvanize" reminded him of the duo's "early B-Boy/techno days".[7]

On 11 July 2005, the song was released as two CD singles and a 12-inch single in the United Kingdom as Push the Button's third single.[8] The British and European CD1 features an edited version of the track and a previously unreleased song "Swiper".[9][10] A Europe-only maxi single contained the original "The Boxer", the DFA version, and a live rendition of "Believe" at the Mediolanum Forum.[11] The second UK CD single contains the same tracklist and an additional music video for its title track while the 12-inch single containing the original, the DFA version and "Swiper".[12][13]

A day later, the CD and the 12-inch single were released in the United States as the album's second single; both were expanded to EPs featuring an extended version of the song, two previous Europe and UK only-released B-sides "Giant" and "Spring", with remixes from DFA, Mathew Jonson, Erol Alkan and Abe Duque.[3][14][15] This EP, with the inclusion of the track "Swiper", was also available for digital download exclusively in the US.[16] Outside the US, a radio edit of "The Boxer" and its edited DFA version were released digitally as individual singles.[17][18] On 25 October 2007, Burgess and the duo performed the song live at the BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms at The Roundhouse in Camden, London.[19]

The video was filmed in Budapest, Hungary over several days

London-based director duo Ne-o, Jake Knight and Ryoko Tanaka, directed the music video for "The Boxer".[35] They were on holiday in Hong Kong and were sent a track with DRM which Knight said made it frustrating to play through dial-up connection.[36] Tanaka eventually came up with the idea of a ball that "connected through things".[36] Knight did not quite understand the idea at first, but through a process of miscommunication, they wrote the video's treatment about "a crazy basketball" which was the quickest treatment they had ever written at the time.[36]

The video was then filmed in Budapest, Hungary, over several days. Knight said: "The reason for the location stems from the music in the actual video. The ball needs to bounce synchronized with the 16th or 8th beat in the track. To do that, we needed a space with equidistant or closed surfaces to bounce around. A roof low to the floor but with uprights. Obviously parking lots are ideal. But it was a technical reason that made us go with it." Ne-o used an Arri Super 16mm film camera to shoot the film, then edited it in Adobe Premiere Pro, with 3D animation using Autodesk Softimage.[36]

Writing in his book Reinventing Music Video: Next-generation Directors, Their Inspiration, and Work, British author-director Matt Hanson claimed some might call the video the duo's first action sequence and stated it could be considered "a high-octane version" of Albert Lamorisse's short film The Red Balloon. He wrote: "While [the short] was a poetic 1956 study of a boy befriended by a balloon, here the action is reversed and revved up, with the basketball defiantly trying to bounce away from the city street kid."[36]

The video opens with a boy with a basketball in his bag walking out of a car park. The basketball then begins to bounce out of the bag, jumps out of the city streets and gets into a Lada taxi. After that, it continues to bounce and causes troubles in an office. Its owner struggles to chase the ball but then manages to catch it for a second. Unfortunately, the ball escapes and is run over by a truck driven by the Chemical Brothers. The basketball re-inflates after the accident, jumps into and eventually gets trapped inside an old phone booth near Baross Street, swells to an enormous size, and explodes.[37]

Later in 2011, the Chemical Brothers and director Adam Smith (credited as Flat Nose George) donated the visual of an alternate version of the song entitled "50/50 Mix", in support of the 50/50 Make or Break campaign. 50/50 Make or Break was a fundraising project aimed at raising money for East Africa, created by UK-based charity group Good for Nothing.[38]

Credits adapted from the CD single liner notes.[39]

• The Chemical Brothers – music producer, songwriter
• Steve Dub – engineer
• Mike Marsh – master
• Tim Burgess – vocals, songwriter
• Tappin Gofton – designer, art director
• Kam Tang – illustrator

• Official music video on YouTube
• "Fallon, Flat Nose George & Chemical Brothers: 50/50 Mix" on Vimeo