Wiki
-
Length
3:39
"Grounds for Divorce" is the first single from Elbow's fourth studio album The Seldom Seen Kid.
Song
The song opens with the line:
I've been working on a cocktail, called grounds for divorce
Uncut magazine said it was "surely one of the best opening lines of any pop song in years" and NME compared it to something James Bond might say "this is kind of glorious one-liner he’d mutter before taking the bad guys down and then smooching a lofty Eastern European countess." The lyrics tell a story of excessive drinking in the local pub, ("There's a hole in my neighborhood / Down which of late I cannot help but fall") and an unhappy relationship ("And I’d bring you further roses, but it does you no good").
Paste magazine writes: "The track explodes with their heaviest guitar line to date" and Digital Spy described the song as "Perhaps the loudest and most 'rocking' track in Elbow's career, the combination of infectious riffing and emotional wrangling makes this a call-to-arms that's both joyous and cathartic."
Background
The single was released on 10 March 2008 as the band's first release on Fiction Records across two 7" vinyl records and one CD single. The song marked the band's joint-highest charting single at the time, peaking at No. 19 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming also their third UK Top 20 success and their sixth UK Top 40 entry. It was to be bettered four years later by their succeeding single "One Day Like This" - which was performed by the band in the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, peaking at No. 4 in August 2012. Frontman Guy Garvey told Uncut that "'Grounds for Divorce' was written when I was in an unhappy relationship." Garvey explained the song was about "that feeling of being sick and f***ing tired of everything around you and wanting to get out of there."
Guitarist Mark Potter said he had been playing the riff for years before using it in the song. "You know how most guitarists have something that they play every time they pick up a guitar? Well, that was my one. For 10 years the lads never seemed to notice it. I'd play it and look around the room expectantly and be like, 'Oh well, no reaction again.' Then about two years ago, I played it and Guy was like, 'What's that?' I said, 'What do you mean what's that? I've been playing it for 10 years!"
Awards
On 21 May 2009, "Grounds for Divorce" won the Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song.
Track descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
