The Trees

"The Trees" is the other half of the double A-side released in October 2001 as a lead-up to the release of Pulp's then-latest album We Love Life - the other side was the track "Sunrise." The single as a whole charted at #23 in the UK.

Jarvis Cocker talks frankly about the song's genesis, noting that it was all spawned from a sample of the song "Tell Her You Love Her" by Stanley Myers and Hal Shaper. Said Cocker: "I'd had (that song) for about four or five years and wanted to write a song around it. I'd had loads of goes. We were getting to the end of the sessions, so we had one more go and we nailed it."

The initial lines of the lyrics explain how the narrator "took an air-rifle, shot a magpie to the ground and it died without a sound." Cocker was keen to explain that this was hardly an autobiographical reference: "I'd like to point out that I've never shot an animal with an air rifle! There was an air pistol at my granny's when I was growing up and I was allowed to play with it without any pellets in it. As soon as I got to an age where I might have wanted to go out and shoot creatures, it was hidden. So I've never shot even a magpie... even though they are one of my least favorite because they bully other birds and they spoil their nests and stuff like that. They're a bit of a pest actually."