Cash Machine
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- This article is about the song. For the article about cash dispensing machines, see Automatic teller machine.
| "Cash Machine" | ||
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| Single by Hard Fi | ||
| from the album Stars of CCTV | ||
| Released | 2005 | |
| Format | CD | |
| Genre | Indie | |
| Label | Warner Music | |
| Hard Fi singles chronology | ||
| Cash Machine | "Tied Up Too Tight/Middle Eastern Holiday" (2005) |
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"Cash Machine" was the first single from Middlesex group HARD-Fi, taken from their debut album Stars of CCTV. The single was re-released on December 26, 2005 and went to #14 in the UK singles chart and #15 on the US Modern Rock chart. There have been three different music videos: one low-budget for the original release, and two versions for the re-release.
The song is featured as part of the FIFA Manager 06 soundtrack.
[edit] Track listings (Re-Issue)
- CDS HARD05CD
- Cash Machine
- Cash Machine [Acoustic]
- CDM HARD05CDX
- Cash Machine
- Cash Machine [Roots Manuva Dub]
- Cash Machine [New Video]
- Cash Machine [Old Video]
- Cash Machine [Making Of New Video]
[edit] Chart Positions
| Highest Chart Positions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country | UK | US Modern Rock | HOL | ITA | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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[edit] Music Videos
There are three different music videos for the song.
One video follows a ten-pound note through several owners. It begins with the group's lead singer, Richard Archer, getting the note from a cash machine and giving it to a friend. The friend uses it to buy a beer. The bartender keeps the note and puts it toward buying drugs. The drug dealer collects money from a man on the street and gives the note as change. The man's wallet is pinched by a woman and given to another man, who takes the note and later gives it to a stripper. The club owner takes the note from the stripper, but loses it in the alley behind the club, where it is found by Archer.
Another version has their boss, "Mr. Big," telling the band that "the reason you boys are so skinny is because the record company hasn't paid us." He orders them to steal the tapes from a courier at Heathrow Airport. The band, wearing masks of political figures such as Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II, ends up mostly fighting each other while Archer discovers the case believed to hold the tapes. He is held at gunpoint by the courier, but saved by the other band members. They take the case to a hideout to discover that it only contains the courier's lunch. Archer declares, "Oh knickers!" The video is interspersed with shots of the band playing in a field near an airport as large planes fly overhead.
The third video is a more literal interpretation of the lyrics of the song (for example, Archer trying to use a cell phone while singing "I try to phone a friend / my credit's in the red"). It also shows the interior of a cash machine staffed by miniature humans who are working in conditions akin to coal mines. The video shows these people involved in all steps of making the money, from cutting down the trees used for the paper to painting the money to pushing it through the slot when someone requires it. The workers finally rebel, and the interior of the machine is destroyed in a series of explosions. Archer comes to the machine shortly after these events and, finding a message declaring the machine out of service, again proclaims, "Oh knickers!"
