Get Your Hands off My Woman

In this song, lead singer Justin Hawkins wants a grabby guy to get his dirty mitts off his girlfriend. There's not much to the lyric, but the driving rock rhythm combined with Hawkins' insistent falsetto is rather striking. It made more sense to listeners when they saw the band perform the song: Hawkins typically wore catsuits on stage and pranced like an acrobat.

Also known as "Get Your Hands Off My Woman (Motherf--ker)," this is one of the swearier songs out there. Surprisingly, it also became the breakout hit for The Darkness. The group's first single was "I Believe In A Thing Called Love," released on an independent label in 2002. It went nowhere, but they soon got a deal with Atlantic Records, which issued "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" with some promotional might behind it. By this time, The Darkness had built up an audience in England and were building a legend with their absurdist stage shows that somehow retained a rock sensibility. The song placed at #43 in the UK, setting the stage for their triumphant 2003. When Atlantic re-released "I Believe In A Thing Called Love," it climbed to #2; the band won for Best Group at the BRIT Awards and were named on many "best of" lists in the British music press. They weren't able to conquer America, but "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" had a good run on MTV.

At a 2003 gig in their hometown of Norfolk, England, Justin Hawkins brought some of the band's former schoolteachers on stage and had them sing some fo the dirty lyrics to this song.