Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1982
Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)
Buy Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
"'Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)'" (rendered "Lions in My Own Garden: Exit Someone" on initial release) is the first single by English pop band Prefab Sprout, released on the band's own Candle Records in 1982. The single was reissued in 1983 after the band were signed by Kitchenware Records.
Composition
The song was recorded on 25 February 1982 by a three-piece line-up of Prefab Sprout; Paddy McAloon provides vocals and guitar, Martin McAloon plays bass and Michael Salmon provides drums and percussion. McAloon has described this early lineup as sounding like a mix of the Clash and Steely Dan. Wendy Smith joined the band later in 1982. The song utilises simplistic instrumentation acoustic guitar, bass, drums, harmonica and vibraphone but the structure is complex, ignoring the conventional verse-chorus pattern. According to Adrian Thrills of 'NME', "the meandering melody line takes more than a cursory listen before it connects". Despite the song garnering comparisons to Scottish jangle pop bands Orange Juice and Aztec Camera, McAloon was influenced by the Beatles. McAloon would comment "For me, its very close to "Love Me Do", very pure, spontaneous."
The lyric concerned McAloon's feelings about being apart from his one-time girlfriend, who had left England to study Law in the University of Limoges. McAloon wrote the song to show how much he missed her, and took the letters of Limoges to create the song title, with the name of the city acting as an acronym. McAloon explained in a 1988 interview "this idea of having lions watching you in your own garden matches the feeling of insecurity coming from the abnormality of the situation. Something scary, expressed in a language of my own". Music journalist Stuart Maconie has described the track as "enigmatic, melancholy, tuneful and therefore perfect for a jobless literature graduate with girlfriend problems".
Release
After having no success with major labels, Prefab Sprout set up Candle Records (slogan: 'The Wax That Won't Get on Your Wick') to release their first single, limited to 1000 copies. 800 Martin McAloon had earned from a two-month stint as a nightwatchman was used to fund the release. This 1982 release rendered the A-side's title as "Lions in My Own Garden: Exit Someone". The song was backed with "Radio Love", a song McAloon described as "a celebration of pop music".
The song received airplay by John Peel on BBC Radio 1. Speaking on Gary Crowley's weekly Capital Radio show 'The Magic Box', Elvis Costello named the single one of the best he had heard all year. This was the beginning of Costello's championing of Prefab Sprout, which culminated in the band supporting him at several concerts in December 1983.
The band were signed by Keith Armstrong's Kitchenware Records in March 1983, after Armstrong heard "Lions in My Own Garden: Exit Someone" played in the Newcastle branch of HMV he managed. Kitchenware reissued the single as "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)" in 1983. The song made its CD debut in 1990 when it was included on the Rough Trade compilation '(Thanks To Rough Trade For) A Constant Source Of Interruption'. It appears as track 1 on Prefab Sprout's second "best of" album, '38 Carat Collection' (1999) and on Cherry Red Records' 2013 compilation album 'Scared to Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 19801989'.
Track listings
7"
'Side 1'# "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)"
'Side 2'
# "Radio Love"
References
Buy Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone) now from Amazon
<-- Return to songs from 1982