Illustration from Popular Science magazine, December 1955
At first blush, "Burnt Out Car" sounds like the kind of annoying synth-pop I used to hear on the radio when I was living in Singapore in the '90s, but I suspected from the beginning that there was more more to this song under the surface. It's considered a redheaded stepchild among Saint Etienne singles, and it's because of the interesting way the song came into being. Originally written as a spooky mood piece for the X-Files movie during Saint Etienne's post-Tiger Bay "wilderness years", the first version of it that got released was the "Burnt Out Car (Belearico Remix)" version that came out on the Casino Classics Saint Etienne remix collection in 1996. Balearico was a pseudonym of songwriter/producer Brian Higgins - his better-known "AKA" is Xenomania, the name he used in collaborating with UK girl-pop stars Girls Aloud. That explains the high-gloss, electro-pop sheen that the song has.
Never really intended as a single, "Burnt Out Car (Belearico Remix)" was put out on a promo CD for Casino Classics, giving it quasi-single status. This version of the song was also included on the Continental compilation of non-album tracks, which is where I first heard it. The original version of the song didn't surface until the X-Files movie finally came out in 1998. For Saint Etienne fans with mainstream pop tastes, "Burnt Out Car" is a big favorite, probably explaining why it has been lumped in with the band's real singles on more recent greatest-hits releases. I think that the song works so well because of the contrast between the pop-radio remix production and the melancholic melody, originally intended for a very different kind of song.
"Burnt Out Car" by Saint Etienne
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