1979Released
5:25

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Are 'Friends' Electric?. By Songfacts®.

This song is about man living among robots - how you can lock yourself in a dark room away from any other human. Numan has Asperger's Syndrome, and many of this songs deal with themes of technology and isolation.

Speaking to Dutch TV NTR, Numan said the song is about a robot prostitute and had the BBC known at the time, they wouldn't have playlisted it. "It was a futurist version of getting pornography in the post, what comes in a brown envelope so your neighbors don't know what it is," he explained. "These machines that look human are doing various services in these grey coats and they all look the same." "If the BBC had known what it was about they would never have played it," Numan added, "They would never have let me go on Top of the Pops. Thumbs up for obscure lyrics."

This was released on the album Replicas by Tubeway Army, which was Numan's first band. Replicas came out under the Tubeway Army name at the record company's insistence, but Numan was a solo artist by then, and the band was the one he used from then on: Cedric Sharpley on drums, Russell Bell on keyboards etc. By his third album The Pleasure Principle (also a huge seller in the UK, and featuring "Cars," his only US hit) the name on the record was Gary Numan. With its electronic sound, this track wasn't for everyone, and many critics bashed it. In our 2010 interview with Gary Numan, he explained: "In this country at least (England), the public kind of got it before the media did, and it was #1 here for I think four weeks. And it was on its third week at #1 that radio even started to playlist it. You know, there was a tremendous kind of resistance to it, people thought it was quirky here today, gone tomorrow. And at the time I felt like I was waving my flag, fighting for a cause. But now I look back on it, and I think very differently. So I'm just glad that it's evolved the way it has. I'm glad that the stuff I did in those days gets some recognition. I'm glad that the whole electronic thing found its feet and became a totally established part of music in general, and has been now for a good couple of decades or so. I think there's better music around because of it. The technology itself has come more than leaps and bounds. It's made a dramatic contribution to music in general, and I'm just proud that I played a small part in that."

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Are 'Friends' Electric?.
FKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
94BPM

Album

The album Are 'Friends' Electric? is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Are 'Friends' Electric?.
Beggars Banquet
2008 Beggars Banquet Records Ltd
2008 Beggars Banquet Records Ltd

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5.8MArtists
73.6MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
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