Like all good romance films, the story of Sunday (1994) begins as two worlds collide. Suburban Slough dweller Lee Newell meets Californian wordsmith Paige Turner, and the pair bond over their love of cinema. For Turner and Newell, the big screen offers an escape from the mundanity of the daily grind that stretches from outer London all the way to the west coast of the US. Soon though, the duo decide that watching films simply isn’t enough; they want to exist inside them. So, after the recruitment of mysterious drummer ‘X’, the newly formed three-piece suddenly find themselves making the soundtracks they want to hear.
The result is “Tired Boy”, a debut single that takes inspiration from Newell and Turner’s attraction to melodrama. On their relationship, Newell suggests: “I had stumbled around aimlessly for many years, but I wasn’t born until we’d met.” To this end, there’s a little of Boygenius in how plain-speaking lyricism in “Tired Boy” is matched with clean-cut rhythms. Observational and sardonic, the track’s wordplay is accusatory of a bumbling love interest’s flaws, but winks its way into falling for them anyway; “you sing in a band and your voice is like nails on a chalkboard / but you’re something to die for.” The song, Turner explains, is about “being in love and ultimately jealous with someone so careless and clumsy, yet somehow everything always falls into place for them.”
