[2] It featured on the band's second album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, and was composed by Pogues front man Shane MacGowan.
Its melody is loosely based on that of “Wild Mountain Thyme" (also known as "Will Ye Go Lassie Go"), a song by Francis McPeake in a traditional folk style.
It also references Irish country music singers Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley's version of "My Elusive Dreams": "While Ray and Philomena sang / Of my elusive dream".
The music video for the single was directed in 1985 by Alex Cox and was set in a Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque Britain with Margaret Thatcher in the place of Big Brother as a supreme, god-like authoritarian figure.
The video featured roles played by band members as well as a cameo by the record's producer Elvis Costello.