Never Miss a Beat

Ricky Wilson told the The Sun October 17, 2008 that this reflection on the way some school children know nothing in class but are street smart can be misunderstood as an attack on Broken Britain. The Kaiser Chief vocalist explained: "Me and Nick (Hodgson, drums and co-writer) actually think of it as a celebration. The coolest kids don't necessarily have the best grades. I've always been slightly jealous of them. I was always trying to keep my head down at school and not get into trouble." He added: "I don't want people to think it's all about knife crime. It's not. We're not that political, we're more observant. In the same way, 'I Predict A Riot' wasn't looking down on people who go out on Saturday night and have a good time."

Lily Allen contributed backing vocals on this track, which ended up deep in the mix, along with three members of the Indie band New Young Pony Club. Allen also provided backing vocals on "Always Happens Like That" from the same album, where her contribution was more to the fore. The Londoner previously covered a Kaiser Chief song "Oh My God" on (producer of Off With Their Heads) Mark Ronson's 2007 set Version. Wilson told The Sun: "People forget she's got a really nice voice and I like her as a friend. She's good."

Kaiser Chief bassist, Simon Rix told the story of this song to Drowned In Sound: "'Never Miss A Beat' is the first song we wrote for this album. At the end of last year we wanted to write some more songs, mainly for live. We'd done a lot of summer festivals and we wanted to have something new to play to people coming to the big tours we had planned in the UK and Europe to make them a bit different. We also had a big gig at Elland Road coming up and we wanted to have something new out for that. The plan was to have something pumping in a dance floor way but also something that built up and was euphoric. Nick wrote most of it on bass and it came together quickly - as we find most good songs do. It's a song about how kids are important and are not to be undervalued."