Suburban Knights

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“Suburban Knights”
“Suburban Knights” cover
Single by Hard-Fi
from the album Once Upon a Time in the West
Released 20 August 2007
Format CD, 7", 12"
Recorded Staines, 2006
Genre Indie Rock
Length 4:29
Label Warner Music
Writer(s) Richard Archer
Producer Wolsey White, Richard Archer
Hard-Fi singles chronology
"Better Do Better"
(2006)		 "Suburban Knights"
(2007)		 "Can't Get Along (Without You)"
(2007)
Alternate covers
Cover for the 7" Vinyl
Cover for the 7" Vinyl

"Suburban Knights" is the first single from British band Hard-Fi's second album Once Upon a Time in the West. The physical format of the single was released on August 20, 2007, the digital version was released on August 13, 2007. It reached #7 on 26 August 2007, becoming the band's most successful single in the UK Charts.

The song received its first airplay on Soccer AM on May 19 when the band appeared on the show. Only about 15 seconds of the intro of the song was played however. Later, the single received its first radio play on June 20, featuring on Zane Lowe's Radio One show. The song was nominated for best track at the 2007 Q Awards.

In Peru, "Suburban Knights" has reached #5, while the next single "Can't Get Along (Without You)" did even better in the same chart hitting #1.

Contents

[edit] History

Hard-Fi in the video for Suburban Knights
Hard-Fi in the video for Suburban Knights

It began as a rough demo that had already been created by the time Stars of CCTV had been released and is also one of the older tracks on the album Once Upon a Time in the West. Archer says that it began as just the chorus and the backing vocals. The band started working on it while on tour and played it live a couple of times. "We never said it has to be the first single, we just felt like it was a nice bridge between the first and second albums" Archer tells the NME. Variations of the track were performed live, sounding slightly different from what became the final version.

Archer describes it as being about various things and having your head in lots of places at once. It's about being felt left out and degraded, people looking down on others, journalists slagging off people from suburban areas and dreams being out of reach among other things such as having nothing to do and having no money. Archer says

There's not much in suburban towns so you have to be creative. We've toured the world and have met many people much like ourselves, from suburban areas, we were always told to celebrate where we're from and fight back.[1]

Archer also said,

Suburban Knights is just made to celebrate the amazing people who live in the real world. You have to be creative living in suburbia and we wanted to celebrate that.

[edit] Music video

The music video directed by Ben Crook features the band playing in front of many satellite dishes being filmed by a video camera. This is then broadcast on to many television sets around the UK and eventually around the world. It ends with Richard Archer switching off the transmition with a television remote control.[2]

The video was first broadcast in the UK on Wednesday July 11 at 11:30 pm on Channel 4 and has been featured in the top 10 UK airplay.

When discussing the making of the music video the band said

Our fave part of the video was when it finished. Videos are really long days, so the best bits are the make up artists, the catering and going home at the end.

[edit] Track listings

CD single

  1. "Suburban Knights"
  2. "Suburban Knights" (Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso Mix)

7" single 1

  1. "Suburban Knights"
  2. "You And Me"

7" single 2

  1. "Suburban Knights"
  2. "Suburban Knights" (DJ Wrong Tom's Delight Mix)

[edit] Charts

Suburban Knights has been listed for 9 weeks on the UK Singles Chart, 9 weeks in the Irish Top 50, 3 weeks in the Germany Singles Top 100. It entered the UK singles chart at #7 on August 26, 2007. It reached #23 in the Euro 200 Chart.

Chart (2007) Peak
position
Peru Singles Chart 5
UK Singles Chart[3] 7
European Hot 100 Singles[4] 13
Ireland Singles Top 50[5] 15
Euro 200[6] 23
Germany Singles Top 100[7] 79

[edit] Alternative Covers

UK (promo)
UK (7")
UK (12")

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ NME TV - Hard-Fi track by track album interview (HTML). NME.
  2. ^ YouTube - Hard Fi - Suburban Knights (Video)
  3. ^ Hard-fi - Suburban Knights
  4. ^ European Hot 100 Singles
  5. ^ Hard-fi - Suburban Knights
  6. ^ Euro 200
  7. ^ Hard-fi - Suburban Knights
v • d • e
Hard-Fi
Richard Archer · Ross Phillips · Kai Stephens · Steve Kemp
Studio albums
Singles
Other releases
Cash Machine (EP)  · Sessions@AOL (EP)  · In Operation (DVD) / CCTVersions (Remix Album)  · Once Upon a Time in December (Limited Edition Live CD)
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