"Born Slippy" - by UNDERWORLD

Meet Karl Hyde, the voice and the songwriter behind the London based group Underworld.


The quality that has made Underworld so distinct on the British dance-music scene is that, unlike most dance bands, they write their own lyrics.


For them words are no less important than tunes.
In 1996, the group became internationally recognized, when their song " Born Slippy" was used as the lead track in Danny Boyle's award-winning film 'Trainspotting'.

Find out from Karl Hyde himself what the song is about and how the lyrics were written.

Drive boy dog boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a lipstick boy
She was a beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your innerspace boy
You had
hands girl boy
and steel boy
You had chemicals boy
I've grown so close to you
Boy and you just groan boy
She said comeover comeover
She smiled at you boy.

Drive boy dog boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a lipstick boy
She was a beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your innerspace boy
You had
hands girl boy
and steel boy
You had chemicals boy
I've grown so close to you
Boy and you just groan boy
She said comeover comeover
She smiled at you boy.


Let your feelings slip boy
But never your mask boy
Random blonde bio high density rhythm
Blonde boy blonde country blonde high density
You are my drug boy
You're real boy
Speak to me and boy dog
Dirty numb cracking boy
You get wet boy
Big big time boy
Acid bear boy
Babes and babes and babes and babes and babes
And remembering nothing boy
You like my tin horn boy and get
Wet like an angel
Derail

You got a velvet mouth
You're so succulent and beautiful
Shimmering and dirty
Wonderful and hot times
On your telephone line
And god and everything
On your telephone
And in walk an angel

And look at me your mom
Squatting pissed in a tube-hole at Tottenham Court Road
I just come out of the ship
Talking to the most
Blonde I ever met
Shouting:        Lager lager lager lager
Shouting:        Lager lager lager lager
Shouting...      Lager lager lager
Shouting:        Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing         Mega mega white thing
Mega mega

Shouting lager lager lager lager
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
So many things to see and do
In the tube hole true
Blonde going back to Romford
Mega mega mega going back to Romford
Hi mom are you having fun
And now are you on your way
To a new tension
headache

Find out how Karl writes his lyrics. Learn about his feelings for urban culture and find out what his song 'Born Slippy' is all about.

OK Karl, tell us how you write your songs.
These words are first-take a lot of the time. I fill notebooks with writing, I write every day. And I'll open up some pages in the notebook and I'll see these things, these words in front of me - and I go, 'Yeah, OK, this is this, I want to sing this'.

Where do you get the inspiration for your lyrics from, Karl?
For me, there is an inherent beauty in the city. I see the city as a very very beautiful place. Even the underside of it. There's a beauty even in the kind of... the forceful presentation of something. As long as it's meant with no malice or anger or violence, there's a beauty in its energy.

What is 'Born Slippy' - a dream? A dream come true? Or is it your view of reality?
In the simplest form, it's me walking through the streets of Soho trying to get back home to Romford in Essex. I was referring to myself reduced to a piece of meat, due to the fact that I'd drunk too much. The bigger story is that I'm fascinated by the kind of snapshots that one retains when you've had a couple of drinks. These kind of very precise snapshots one has of a little piece of street, or of a rubbish bin, or of a tape-recorder... I'm talking about being like a hoover, hoovering up all the images and the sounds and the smells of the city. Because after all it's cities that would inspire me.

What exactly does the word 'babe' mean here? Not 'a child', it seems...
What I'm referring to there is a kind of a male idea of a stereotype. This kind of like, 'Ah, babes, oh, she's a real babe' - meaning a kind of real derogatory term... For a woman, yeah. And that's not having a go at women. That's having a go at men.

Why did you choose to use the word 'boy' to describe a man - not 'chap' or 'lad'?
Because I think men are boys. Most of us haven't grown up, you know, most of us are still struggling with taking responsibility. It's like, 'I don't want responsibility tonight, tonight I want to lose control' ... And so, it's boy again.

In the song, the word lager gets repeated 16 times! Did you mean it to be a 'lager anthem'?
The lyrics are quite ironic. At first it was kind of upsetting that it was used like a 'lager anthem', which was the antithesis of the way it was written. It was a piece of irony.
The first time we played it live, people raised their lager cans and I was horrified because I was still deep into alcoholism. It was never meant to be a drinking anthem; it was a cry for help. Now I don't mind.
Why Born Slippy? It was a greyhound we won money on.

Did you get all that? Well, here's a chance for you to check if you know exactly what some of the words and expressions Karl used mean.

1: If something is first-take, it means..

-you take it before you take anything else

-you leave it unchanged, unedited, the way you first saw or perceived it

-you take it for the first time

2: If you are referring to yourself…

-you are talking about yourself

-you are talking to yourself

-you are asking yourself

3: A snapshot is…

-someone who shoots their gun in a sharp way

-a quick attempt to do something

-a photographic image of a situation or place

4: You are having a go at someone if you are…

-walking towards them

-critisizing them or arguing with them

-leaving their company








TRAINSPOTTING Trailer: