"Mercury" is a song by

Bloc Party Bloc Party are an English Rock music, rock band that was formed in London, England, London in 1999 by co-founders Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, sampler) and Russell Lissack (lead guitar). Their first four albums all featur ...

. It was produced by

Jacknife Lee Garret "Jacknife" Lee is an Irish music producer and mixer. He has worked with a variety of artists, including the Cars, U2, R.E.M., the Killers, Robbie Williams, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, Two Door Cinema Club, AFI, the Hives, Weezer, One Direc ...

. Like "

Flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications in physics. For transport phe ...

", the band's previous single, the song uses mostly

electronic instruments An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into ...

. The song was first played on

Zane Lowe Alexander Zane Reed Lowe (born 1973) is a New Zealand radio DJ, live DJ, record producer, and television presenter. After an early career in music creation, production and DJing, he moved to the UK in 1997. He came to prominence through pr ...

's show on Radio 1 on 7 July 2008 and was uploaded to the Radio 1 website about fifteen minutes later. The single was made available for digital download on 10 July 2008. The track was named Single of the Week by Drowned in Sound on 11 August 2008. It peaked at number 16 on the UK Singles Chart. The song also appeared in the

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they imitated real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" (EASN) ...

game ''

Fight Night Round 4 ''Fight Night Round 4'' is a boxing video game developed by EA Sports. It is the sequel to '' Fight Night Round 3'', released in 2006. It was released in 2009 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry. The game's featured ...

'' as well as

Rockstar Games Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, using the assets Take-Two had previously acquired from BMG Interactive. Foun ...

game '' Midnight Club: Los Angeles''. An official remix by Hervé, subtitled "Hervé Is in Disarray Remix", was released on 2009's '' Intimacy Remixed''.

Music video

The

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

for "Mercury", directed by

Ace Norton Ace Norton (born May 24, 1982, in Venice, Los Angeles, California) is a Japanese American filmmaker and artist born and raised in Venice, California. Norton creates music videos, commercials, fashion films, and movies. Biography Norton grew up ...

, was simultaneously unveiled along with the song. It portrays

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes. Thus monkeys, in that sense, co ...

scientists A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature ...

placing an assortment of body parts into a body. The resulting creature, which has a

bull A bull is an intact (i.e., not Castration, castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e. cows proper), bulls have long been an important symbol cattle in r ...

's horned head, a

crab Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura (meaning "short tailed" in Greek language, Greek), which typically have a very short projecting tail-like abdomen#Arthropoda, abdomen, usually hidden entirely under the Thorax (arthropo ...

pincer Pincer may refer to: *Pincers (tool) *Pincer (biology), part of an animal *Pincer ligand, a terdentate, often planar molecule that tightly binds a variety of metal ions *Pincer (Go), a move in the game of Go *"Pincers!", an episode of the TV series ...

, and a hairy human body then rises in popularity, eventually becoming the

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...

. The entire time, the scientists are controlling it. Eventually, the creature (named Smith) goes to war with other countries to get

bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – berry (botany), botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called pla ...

for the monkey scientists. It was made available to view on Bloc Party's website.

Track listing

CD: Wichita / WEBB180SCD - United Kingdom

CD: Wichita / WEBB180CDAU - Australia

7": Wichita / WEBB180S - United Kingdom

12": Wichita / WEBB180T - United Kingdom

Digital (iTunes Store) - United States

#. Mercury (3:51)

Charts

References

External links

"Mercury" music video
at

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

{{authority control Bloc Party songs 2008 singles Song recordings produced by Jacknife Lee 2008 songs Wichita Recordings singles Songs written by Kele Okereke Songs written by Russell Lissack Songs written by Matt Tong