"Every successful band has one song that kicks the door down" Sit Down - James

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"Every successful band has one song that kicks the door down. Before Sit Down was released, we played it in Paris, and a load of Mancunians had shipped themselves over. We started playing the song and one by one, everyone spontaneously started sitting down. By the song's end, the entire thousand-strong crowd were sat on the floor. Some of us cried. You remember those moments." So said Tim Booth in an interview in the Guardian with Dave Simpson in 2014, talking of the song that catapulted James into the mainstream.

The song was released twice, once in 1989 when it only reached number 77 in the UK singles charts, and then again in 1991, when it spent three weeks at number two, held off of the top spot by Chesney Hawkes' one and only hit (pun intended!).

"Larry Gott, the band's guitarist spoke about how the song was written in the same interview
"Sit Down is one of those songs that encourages people to put their arms around strangers. As soon as we launch into the opening bars, they start smiling. Then they turn to someone next to them or their girlfriend or boyfriend and hug them, and then they start singing every single word. As a musician, that's incredibly humbling."

"Like most of our songs, it came about through improvisation. We'll get in a room and fiddle around on our instruments and from chaos and noise, you suddenly get some music. With Sit Down, we'd been rehearsing at the Boardwalk in Manchester for a couple of hours, and the song just fell, almost fully formed, into our laps."

"It's a very simple tune: three major chords – E, A and B – that repeat over and over with that silly drum beat. After 25 minutes playing around with it we had verses and choruses and an instrumental break. I remember everyone laughing afterwards. It felt so stupid, like we'd written a Eurovision Song Contest entry, but we knew it could be a special song."

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