Song of the Day 1/25: Arcade Fire, “Games Without Frontiers”

I have featured Peter Gabriel’s song about international diplomacy before, but it seems apt today in light of all the recent media saber-rattling. Besides, I had forgotten about this cover Arcade Fire recorded for 2013’s “And I’ll Scratch Yours,” a Gabriel-commissioned project featuring artists whose songs he covered on “Scratch My Back.”

The recurrent phrase “Jeux Sans Frontières,” frequently misheard by English speakers as “she’s so popular,” was the French name of a European TV game show that started in the ’60s. According to Wikipedia, “Teams representing a town or city in one of the participating countries would compete in games of skill, often while dressed in bizarre costumes.” The show was licensed to several different countries; the British version was called “It’s a Knockout,” also name-checked in the lyrics.

Gabriel explained the song’s genesis:

“I just began playing in a somewhat light-hearted fashion — ‘Hans and Lottie …’ — so it looked, on the surface, as just kids. The names themselves are meaningless, but they do have certain associations with them. So it’s almost like a little kids’ activity room. Underneath that, you have the TV programme [and the] sort of nationalism, territorialism, competitiveness that underlies all that assembly of jolly people.”