“Grass” by XTC

Colin Moulding wrote "Grass" and sings it, and XTC picked it as the lead single from Skylarking in 1986. No, it isn't a pot song, whatever the title suggests: Moulding had Seven Fields in mind, a stretch of parkland in Swindon. He built it on a guitar tuned to open E, found the chord changes by running the shapes of Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air", and pinched the idea of blending violin with guitar from John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?". Todd Rundgren, producing and engineering, dropped a tiple into the mix and played synthesizer.

Moulding first sang it low, until Rundgren warned him the deep voice came off leering, so he borrowed a Bowie trick and doubled himself an octave up. On the album it sits snug against "Summer's Cauldron", bringing back that song's insect chorus.

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