“The Dark of the Matinee” by Franz Ferdinand

"The Dark of the Matinée", shortened to "Matinée" on the single, was the third single from Franz Ferdinand's self-titled 2004 debut, following "Take Me Out" in April, and it reached eight in the UK. Tore Johansson produced and mixed it, and Bob Hardy, Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy share the writing credit.

It's a schoolboy daydream: the walk home from Bearsden Academy, a grand future imagined right down to telling Terry Wogan all about it on national television, until the fantasy collapses under its own absurdity. Hardy, the bassist, sparked the chorus and title by calling the dark of a matinée the perfect place to play. The video dresses the Scottish band as schoolboys dancing as if possessed, after Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills and the lip-syncing of his Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.