Collaborations Don't Work

FFS is a supergroup formed by Glaswegian indie rock band Franz Ferdinand and American rock band Sparks. This track finds the two bands poking fun at their collaboration. Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos told Digital Spy: "There's a sense of humor in that, as well. I don't think you have to have a really sharpened sense of humor to pick up on that. I think if anything, that song sets the grounds quite clear, as well. While there is a sense of humor, there is a valid point in there. Sometimes collaborations really don't work. And the song just lists the way that collaborations can't work. I guess the essence of it is that if you're too precious, and take yourself too seriously, that it's definitely not going to work," he added. "Maybe that's what we learnt – maybe we learnt from that song… learnt how to make sure a collaboration would work."

This was the first song that Sparks sent to Franz Ferdinand. "It was kind of like a joke to see. We were on the same level," Alex Kapranos told NME. "When Nick (McCarthy, Franz Ferdinand's guitarist), and I heard it for the first time we thought it was really funny." The Franz Ferdinand pair responded with a double dare in form of a section featuring the line "we ain't no collaborators, I am a partisan," equating musical collaborators with Nazi collaborators in World War II. "As we were sending it off, we said, 'there are ever going to find this funny, although never going to speak to us again,'" Kapranos said. "I think that song underlines the fact that both bands were aware that collaborations can be pretty rotten. We approached it, not wanting to do something bland and half arsed."