This song is about a compulsive gambler. Written by the band, lead singer Michael Sadler came up with the story of Aldo, who hits the casino and gets entranced by the action. He is "wound like a clock," a metaphor for how he's spinning out of control. The character in the song is not based on any particular person, but is the embodiment of someone who can't control his compulsions. "I don't know if there's a lesson to be learned or a moral to that," Sadler said in our 2014 interview. "But it's about gambling and the addiction factor."
Saga didn't have MTV in mind when they wrote this song, but the story was very video-friendly, and their record company commissioned a clip that shows Aldo falling on hard times in an upscale casino. MTV had launched just a few months before this song was released, and they were desperate for new videos, since most artists didn't make them for their songs.
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