1989

Album: Close to Home (2022)
Charted: 23
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Over a sample of The Stone Roses' wah-wah classic "Fools Gold," Aitch channels the hedonistic Madchester era. "Always feel like I missed out on back in the day, from the stories I hear it was way better back then," said the Manchester rapper. "Obviously I've not figured out how to time travel yet, so this is the closest I'm gonna get."
  • Factory Records' Tony Wilson coined the term "Madchester" to describe the musical and cultural scene that developed in Manchester in the late 1980s. Factory groups New Order and Happy Mondays were part of the scene along with Inspiral Carpets, the Charlatans, James and, of course, Stone Roses. Aitch named the song after the year when The Stone Roses released "Fools Gold."

    "There's not really been a representation of Manchester on a worldwide scale since Oasis and The Stone Roses, so it'd just be good to carry that on," Aitch told The Face.
  • Previous instances of rappers sampling "Fools Gold" include Run-DMC on their 1990 song "What's It All About" and Wretch 32 on his "Unorthodox" single.
  • Aitch's go-to producer Whyjay came up with the instrumentation along with frequent Clean Bandit collaborator Mark Ralph. The two producers played all the instruments (keyboards, synthesizer, drums, strings, bass, and guitar) apart from AlunaGeorge's George Reid pitching in with additional synthesizer.
  • The voice you hear at the beginning is that of Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder. According to Aitch, he agreed to do the track for "four cans of Guinness."

    "He came over, drank his cans back to back and turned the mic on," Aitch told The Sun. "I asked him about 1,000 questions and we took a four-second snippet out of his answers. So it was a cheap date. Shaun can come round any time!"

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