It was recorded on a 16-track analogue Studer tape machine and an ex-Steve Marriott Helios mixing console at Escape Studios, a residential facility in Egerton, Kent, England, by engineer and producer John Burns, assisted by Ian Maidman, and later worked on and mixed at Basing Street Studios by Robert Ash.

[5][citation needed] It was re-released in the UK in January 1992, backed with "Pretty in Pink" by the Psychedelic Furs to promote the compilation album, Sound of the Suburbs, and appeared in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks, peaking at No.

[8] The song was placed at number 18 in John Peel's all-time Festive Fifty millennium edition.

"It took me a long time to figure out that it's about drugs – not a girl from another planet – and that space travel is a metaphor for being high.

"[12] In an interview in 2015 Perrett declared that the song has been actually inspired by a girl and that it is not about heroin, nevertheless admitting that he always enjoyed "writing ambiguous lyrics that could be taken on two or three different levels".