“The song started out an a little jam called Electro," says Vig. "I programmed a synth progression over a drumbeat at home and brought it in. Everybody loved it. Shirley came up with some lyrics and started singing in this faux German accent. We were like, ‘OK, it’s really cool, but maybe you should lose the German accent.’ We laughed about it, though, and the point is that she heard something very Krautrock, a little techno. We walked around the studio mimicking the singer from Rammstein.

“Initially, the song was very electronic, but after Shirl did her final vocals, we toughened the track up. We changed the chords from major to minor, and Steve came up with that New Order-type riff – I think he did it on a bass.

“Shirl did a vocal on the bridge, and we liked that idea so much that we used it for the intro; we wrote a part that’s almost prog rock, kind of like Cream’s White Room. As soon as we did that, we said, ‘Oh, this should start the record – it’s so huge!’"

Listen - Automatic Systematic Habit