The Story Behind The Song: How Franz Ferdinand created ‘Take Me Out’
If you’re a turn-of-the-century indie kid, you may have looked in the mirror at some point over the past couple of years to notice a few creases and a slightly taller forehead. For those of you lucky enough to have maintained a youthful countenance, I’m afraid to inform you that sunrise is over, and the daylight of life has reached full intensity: that catchy single that launched Franz Ferdinand to fame ten years ago has just turned 20.
‘Take Me Out’ arrived in January 2004 following ‘Darts of Pleasure’ as the second single to preview Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled debut album. For an achingly long time, as we’ve just discovered, this classic has locked horns with The Killers’ ‘Mr. Brightside’ on sticky alt-disco dancefloors. Although Paddy McGuinness may have missed a trick in excluding the catchy song from his like-titled game show, the single’s rowdy exterior obscures a deeper profundity.
Casting our air guitars to one side for just a moment, it is important to note the name of this indie powerhouse. The Glaswegian four-piece, fronted by the charismatic Alex Kapranos, consulted a passion for modern history when seeking a name for their band in 2002.
After watching the racehorse Archduke Ferdinand win the Northumberland Plate in 2001, the four youngsters began to discuss the real Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination is attributed to the beginning of World War I. Fascinated by the historical implications of the alliterative name, the band made a swift decision they would never regret.
In an interview with the Scottish publication Is This Music? in 2010, bassist Bob Hardy said, “Mainly, we just liked the way it sounded. We liked the alliteration.” Kapranos added that they also liked the historical association. “He was an incredible figure as well,” he said. “His life, or at least the ending of it, was the catalyst for the complete transformation of the world, and that is what we want our music to be. But I don’t want to over-intellectualise the name thing. Basically, a name should just sound good… like music.”
Franz Ferdinand returned to military history when creating some of their early material. While ‘Darts of Pleasure’ is an energetic ode to indulgence, the chants of “Super-Fantastic” in German at the song’s close hint at a return to 20th-century conflict qualified by the hidden meaning of ‘Take Me Out’.
One evening in 2003, Kapranos sat down to watch Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 2001 war movie Enemy At The Gates. “It’s set during the Second World War around the siege of Stalingrad,” Kapranos once explained on the Song Exploder podcast. “One of the themes of the film is this standoff between two snipers: Jude Law is the Soviet sniper, and Ed Harris is the evil Nazi. They’re both kind of tucked away, hidden from each other, waiting for the other to make a move and expose themselves. ‘Cause as soon as the other makes a move, the other will know where they are and will take them out.”
The following day, “while mucking about” on his guitar, Kapranos began to write a song inspired by the tense situation backed by a propulsive and uncompromisingly militant progression. Although the single was conceived in a sniper standoff, the ambiguity of the lyrics welcomes a romantic interpretation.
“This image of the two snipers left quite an impact on me; it felt like a very good metaphor for the kind of romantic situations that we sometimes find ourselves in,” he added. “You know, where you both know you’re into the other, but no one wants to kind of, like, expose their vulnerability and make a move and let the other know how they feel. And so I could write [the song] so you can’t really tell what I’m talking about. Am I talking about snipers, or am I talking about some kind of romantic situation?”
Following its release on January 12th, 2004, ‘Take Me Out’ peaked at number three on the UK Singles chart and has since joined The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’ as a staple sing-along at sporting events. In no small way did this infectious riff contribute to the runaway success of Franz Ferdinand, which won the Mercury Prize in 2004.
Listen to Franz Ferdinand’s biggest hit below.
