“Ooh, look what you made me do” jeered Taylor Swift on the snarkiest pop hitof 2017. As the lead single from the superstar’s sixth album broke Spotify’s record for the song most-streamed on its release date, did you have the nagging feeling you’d heard that hook before? You had! Against the odds, the newly rebranded Mean Girl was “interpolating” Right Said Fred’s goofy 1991 chart topper: “I’m Too Sexy”.
The Fairbrass brothers, Fred and Richard, from East Grinstead in Sussex, started out making “acoustic power-pop” in a group called The Actors in the 1970s, touring with Suicide and Joy Division. A move to New York in the 1980s yielded the odd session and video jobs with Mick Jagger and David Bowie (and Fred got to play guitar for Bob Dylan in the movie Hearts of Fire), but they were going nowhere so they came back to London and took jobs in gyms.
Disenchanted by the acoustic scene, they dialled up programmer Brian Pugsley, bassist Phil Spalding and guitarist Rob Manzoli to knock out something “cheap with a beat”. Mocking the gym’s narcissistic culture, Richard Fairbrass stripped off and started singing “I’m too sexy for my shirt”. Manzoli slipped in a guitar riff from Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun” (1967) to give it a rockier edge, but beats supplied by Heaven 17’s Ian Craig Marsh and DJ Tommy D bopped it back into the Eurodisco zone. It was recorded on a slim budget. “There was a studio we found that [had] actually gone into receivership,” Fred told Rolling Stone last year. “But if you gave the janitor guy some money, he'd open it up at night, on the understanding you didn't put any lights on and you didn't put on the heating.” Matching the novelty value of their song, they named themselves Right Said Fred after a 1962 comic song by the British actor Bernard Cribbins.
Every label they approached rejected the song, but the teenage receptionist at Red Bus Studios heard its potential, put herself forward as the band’s manager and found a plugger who talked BBC Radio 1 DJ Simon Bates into playing the unsigned single off the acetate.
“The phones went mental,” said Fred Fairbrass. “And from that moment, the record just went insane.” “I’m Too Sexy”topped the charts in five countries (including the US, where “I’m too sexy for school” became a popular excuse for truancy), although Bryan Adams’ interminable “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” kept it off the top spot in the UK.
The band made a mint because they’d released the single on their own independent label and had no serious investment to recoup. They were irritated by those who took the song at face value, not realising that the lyrics about a man who was too sexy for his cat and his hat were tongue-in-cheek. But Richard was tickled when Madonna told fans she’d like to bed him.
“I’m Too Sexy” has enjoyed remarkable longevity for a novelty song. Ubercool indie dance trio St Etienne frosted it in irony it as a charity single for the Aids and HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust in 1992, adding lines like “I'm / too shaky for my Stevens”. In 2001 the song was referenced in both NBC’s political drama The West Wing and on the opening track of Jay-Z’s acclaimed sixth album, The Blueprint, which saw the former drug dealer claiming: “I'm too sexy for jail like I'm Right Said Fred”. In 2013 Right Said Fred recorded: “I’m too Smurfy”for the soundtrack of the Smurfs 2 movie. Comic versions by Tom Hanks and William Shatner are still available on YouTube.
Swift’s decision to credit the band follows the 2015 copyright lawsuit over “Blurred Lines”which saw Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams forced to pay more than $5m to Marvin Gaye’s children after a jury decided they’d borrowed more than just the “vibe” of the soul singer’s 1977 disco classic “Got To Give it Up”. Consequently, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson and Ed Sheeran have all given props to the writers of older songs which have bled into their new ones. The Fairbrass brothers say they’re delighted with Swift’s equally “cynical” reworking of their old hit. Nobody’s too sexy for a fresh wave of royalties.
We’re keen to hear from our readers. Whose version of “I’m Too Sexy” is best? Let us know in the comments.
‘The Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Big Machine Records LLC, Sexy Records, RSF Recordings, Polydor Associated Labels, Universal Music Group International
Picture credit: Terry Smith/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images