“Fire it Up” by Modest Mouse

"Fire It Up" comes from We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, the 2007 Modest Mouse album on Epic, and the music is credited to the lineup of the day: Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green, Eric Judy, Johnny Marr, Tom Peloso and Joe Plummer, with Brock writing the words. Dennis Herring produced it and mixed it with Joe Zook, and Naheed Simjee sings backing vocals.

Plenty of listeners heard the title and assumed it was a pot song. Brock set the record straight with Rolling Stone: he meant it the way you'd turn over a car's engine, a mechanic's metaphor rather than a stoner's. The band later shot greenscreen footage for it and two other album tracks and handed it over to fans to cut their own videos, with David Naylor taking the contest.

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