Released 1978 Recorded April 1978 Label Columbia | Format Vinyl Length 3:02 Writer(s) Peter Perrett | |
"Another Girl, Another Planet" is the most successful song by the English rock band The Only Ones. It is the second track on their first album, The Only Ones, released in 1978. The song has since been covered by several other performers.
Contents
Recording
It was recorded on a 16-track analogue Studer tape machine and an ex Steve Marriot Helios mixing console at Escape Studios, a residential facility in Egerton, Kent, UK, by engineer/producer John Burns, assisted by Ian (now, Jennifer) Maidman, and later worked on and mixed at Basing Street studios by Robert Ash.
Chart performance
The track was not a chart hit upon its initial release in 1978. Its first chart appearance was in July 1981 – at No. 44, for one week, on the New Zealand chart. 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. 57.
Recognition
AllMusic describes it as "Arguably, the greatest rock single ever recorded".
The song was placed at number 18 in John Peel's all-time Festive Fifty millennium edition. Playing it in 1980's Festive Fifty, he introduced it as an "artful little caprice".
In March 2005, Q placed the song at number 83 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks.
"A fantastic song with an amazing guitar line," enthused Tim Wheeler of Ash. "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. It was Peter Perrett's heroin-heavy drawl that eventually gave it away."
In popular culture
The song's title was used as the name of a 1992 American independent movie directed by Michael Almereyda, though the song does not appear in the film. It does appear, though, in five films and their soundtracks: That Summer! (1979), Different for Girls (1996), Me Without You (2001), D.E.B.S. (2004) and Paul (2011).
Blink-182
Blink-182 recorded a cover of this song for the opening track of Travis Barker's MTV reality show Meet the Barkers. It was later released in 2005 on their Greatest Hits album.
Other covers
Other cover versions have been recorded by;