Sister Havana - Live

Urge Overkill are best known for their version of the Neil Diamond song "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon," which was used in the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction. But before that, they were an up-and-coming Chicago band making inroads in alternative rock circles. "Sister Havana," the lead single to their 1993 album Saturation, is their most popular original song.

The core members of Urge Overkill are Nash Kato and King Roeser, who both sing, play a variety of instruments, and write songs. Their drummer at this time was Blackie Onassis. In a 2022 Songfacts interview with Kato and Roeser, Kato, who handles lead vocals on the track, explained how "Sister Havana" formed: "It sounded like a hook: 'sis-ter Ha-vana,'" he said. "Then the lyrics more or less wrote themselves. We didn't have any firm stance on America's relationship with Cuba, but it sang well and sounded like a hook. There was no political commitment. Roeser added: "In hindsight, you can see it as Urge's first foray into geopolitics. The protagonist, Urge, or the US, is trying to woo the woman, who could be Cuba."

The band was signed to Geffen Records, which spent big bucks on videos around this time, so they pitched the idea of shooting the "Sister Havana" video in Cuba, hoping they could get a trip there on the company's dime. Politics got in the way, so they settled for the Little Havana section of Miami as the video location. "We had a hell of a time," Roeser told Songfacts. "Probably a better time than we would have had in Cuba with all the red tape."