The song is lyrically about anal sex, as it uses various sexual innuendos throughout the song. Ian Gillan commented:
There's this guy named Redbeard, from a radio station down in Texas. He phoned me up after it had been played on every radio station in America and said, "Is this what I think it's about?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "It's amazing, every radio station in America is playing a song written about anal sex and they don't even realize what's going on." And I was like, well it's not in-your-face anal sex, it's just a joke. It just came about with the lyrics. It's no big deal. But it's a humorous thing and not meant to be offensive. And I think it was just an afterthought. It certainly wasn't what inspired the song.[2]
After receiving considerable airplay,[3] the song was released commercially in the US in December 1984, while in the UK, it was released as the second single from the Perfect Strangers album in June 1985.[4]
