"Stuck in the Middle with You" is a song written by Scottish musicians Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan and originally performed by their band Stealers Wheel. The band performed the song on the BBC's Top of the Pops in May 1973, and the song charted at No. 8 in the UK Singles Chart. It also became an international hit, reaching No. 6 in the US Billboard Hot 100.
Overview
"Stuck in the Middle" was released on Stealers Wheel's 1972 eponymous debut album. Gerry Rafferty provided the lead vocals, with Joe Egan singing harmony. It was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Rafferty's lyrics are a dismissive tale of a music industry cocktail party written and performed as a parody of Bob Dylan's paranoia. The band was surprised by the single's chart success. The single sold over one million copies, eventually peaking at No. 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, No. 8 in the UK, and No. 2 in Canada. Billboard ranked it as the No. 30 song for 1973. The band appeared playing the song on BBC's Top of the Pops on 18 May 1973.
Music video
The video portrays the band performing in a corner of a large, empty building. Their performance is intercut with shots of Egan, miming to a vocal track by Rafferty, at a small banquet table with a number of garishly dressed and made-up supper guests. These include an actual clown, a bespectacled bowler-hatted gent devouring spaghetti and a lavishly dressed woman eating cream cakes and grapes. The clown, who has difficulty eating a plastic chicken, continually squeezes Egan out whenever he tries to take food from the table. The guitar solo is played on a guitar played flat with an empty beer bottle used as a slide. Eventually, the other band members appear, driving off the strange characters so that Egan can sit down at last.
The song is used in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 debut film Reservoir Dogs, during the scene in which the character Mr. Blonde taunts and tortures bound policeman Marvin Nash while singing and dancing to the song. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Tarantino recalled:
"That was one of those things where I thought would work really well, and auditions, I told the actors that I wanted them to do the torture scene, and I'm gonna use 'Stuck in the Middle With You,' but they could pick anything they wanted, they didn't have to use that song. And a couple of people picked another one, but almost everyone came in with 'Stuck in the Middle With You,' and they were saying that they tried to come up with something else, but that's the one. The first time somebody actually did the torture scene to that song, the guy didn't even have a great audition, but it was like watching the movie. I was thinking, 'Oh my God, this is gonna be awesome!' "
Alternative rock bandLazlo Bane covered the song for their 2007 cover albumGuilty Pleasures. Their version was used in the 2014 film Let's Be Cops in the scene parodying the one from Reservoir Dogs. It was also released on the film's soundtrack album. An episode of Supernatural is titled "Stuck in the Middle," in which the characters re-enact a scene from Reservoir Dogs. In "I Am the Future," the season 1 finale of Happy!, Happy re-enacts the scene from Reservoir Dogs by tickling another imaginary friend with one of his feathers while the song is playing to find out where Very Bad Santa is, how it happened to him, and why he kidnapped Hailey Hansen. In one episode of the showMalcolm in the Middle, Hal is shown listening to the song on a record as various events occur around him. In one episode of the show 'That '70s Show', this song plays during the transition of the nineteenth episode of the sixth season. In an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia titled "Charlie Catches a Leprechaun," Charlie re-enacts the scene from Reservoir Dogs in the basement while the song plays. The song was featured in the 2004 Eddsworld episode "Edd Again". The song is used as a theme for The Michael Smerconish Program, as a nod to his moderate views. The song appears in a 2020TV commercial for IBM.
Cover versions
released a version of the song on his 1980 album, Can't Explain. Juice Newton recorded a version for her 1985 album, "Old Flame." The Jeff Healey Band released a cover as their third single from their 1995 album Cover to Cover. A disco cover version by Louise reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart in 2001. American baroque pop band San Fermin performed a version of the song in July 2015 for The A.V. Club A.V. Undercover series. A cover by Grace Potter is the opening theme of Netflix series Grace and Frankie. In 1997 Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune suggested that the Sheryl Crow song "All I Wanna Do", released on her 1993 debut album Tuesday Night Music Club, was "a re-write" of "Stuck in the Middle With You." In 2014, the duo Dawn and Hawkes and contestant Josh Murley sang it as part of The Battles in season 6 of the American seriesThe Voice when both were in Team Adam Levine. Levine kept Dawn and Hawkes to go to next round. The song was released as "Stuck In The Middle With You " after the broadcast on March 24, 2014. In 2019, YouTube musician ShadyVox made a cover to promote a recent, at the time, Piemations animation called Sheriff Hayseed.
