Loaded (6:53)

“Loaded” is a song recorded by the rock band Primal Scream. It was the first single released from the group’s 1991 breakthrough album, Screamadelica.

The song was conceived by Andrew Weatherall who later went on to produce it after he was asked to remix “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”, a song from the band’s eponymous second album, Primal Scream.

At the start of the song, Weatherall added an audio sample from the Peter Fonda film The Wild Angels.

Just what is it that you want to do?
We wanna be free
We wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded
And we wanna have a good time
That’s what we’re gonna do
Away baby let’s go
We’re gonna have a good time
We’re gonna have a party
—The truncated Fonda quote sampled at the beginning of the song

(Mudhoney used an unedited version of the same quote on the song In ‘N’ Out Of Grace, from their debut EP Superfuzz Bigmuff.)

The rest of the song heavily samples “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”, using the bassline and piano melody from the original song but overlaid with the drum loop from an Italian bootleg remix of Edie Brickell’s song “What I Am” and additionally samples Bobby Gillespie singing a line from Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” and Andie MacDowell from the film Sex, Lies and Videotape saying “That’s beautiful… That’s really beautiful.”

The single was actually released before the album in March 1990, 19 months before the arrival of the album in October 1991 and was around 3 minutes shorter than the album version.