“Mary” by Scissor Sisters

"Mary" sits fourth on Scissor Sisters' self-titled 2004 debut, and there's a real person behind it: Jake Shears wrote it for Mary Hanlon, his closest friend, who died of a brain aneurysm in April 2006. Shears and Babydaddy share the writing credit, Babydaddy recorded it, Paul Leschen plays piano and extra keyboards and Crispin Cioe adds saxophone; the band produced it and mixed it with Neil Harris.

Released as a UK single on October 11, 2004, it reached 14 on the UK Singles Chart. Fans took the video as a curio: Julien Temple's live-action commuter rides the Tube to a Docklands office and drifts off at the photocopier into a fairy-tale cartoon spoofing Rapunzel, produced by Don Bluth, whom the band sought out because they remembered an animated sequence in Xanadu so fondly.

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