Pretty Vacant

## Single by Sex Pistols

"**Pretty Vacant**" is a song by the Sex Pistols, released on 2 July 1977 as the band's third single from their only album, *Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols*.

## Background

In a track-by-track review, they discussed to *Rolling Stone*:

Rotten: That's another thing done that night with Glen. Glen had this idea of the band being like, as he put it, "Soho poofs," I suppose very much like Oscar Wilde, which is where I thought he was coming from. We're not talking like overtly gay overtures here or anything like that; it's really just the style of dressing. And that's never how I have seen myself. I couldn't imagine Mr. Rotten in frills and lace. And so "Pretty Vacant," the concept, turned into really just kind of a football chant. And it was adopted on the terraces by quite a few firms – firms being gangs of hooligans.

Matlock: Malcolm McLaren had been going back and forth to the States to be involved in the rag trade and buy old Fifties clothes because he had a Teddy Boy shop, and I knew he ran into Sylvain Sylvain from the New York Dolls and went backstage. Malcolm came back with fliers for the shows and he brought back set lists, but none of these bands had made records at that stage. One said "Blank Generation," and that got me thinking about how there was nothing going on in London, and there was a real air of despondency and desperation, so I came out with the idea of "Pretty Vacant."

I had the set of chord changes and the lyric but I was short of a riff. I knew it needed a melodic thing, and I heard something on a record by a band called Abba and it inspired the riff I needed, and I said, "Guys, I've got it." I mentioned the Abba influence in an interview once and the bass player from Abba somehow got my address and started sending me Christmas cards for about 10 years.

John sang the lyrics, but we played so loud in the rehearsal that I didn't know for months that he changed the lyrics in the second verse – "No cheap comments, because we know what we feel." We couldn't bloody hear him. That song was our statement somehow.

Rotten: There is an irony in that song because we weren't very pretty, and we were far from vacant. Again I need to repeat myself to explain these songs correctly. I never considered myself pretty or vacant. Maybe I should, would have had an easier life. I'd be dead wrong, but it would have been really easy. No, you can't get sucked up into the system, can't allow that. And I sang it "Pretty Va-cunt" as a sneaky one on my behalf.

## Lyrics

**Lyrics**
[Chorus 1]

There's no point in asking you'll get no reply

Oh just remember I don't decide

I got no reason it's all too much

You'll always find us out to lunch

[Chorus 2]

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty we're vacant

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty

A vacant

[Verse 1]

Don't ask us to attend 'cause we're not all there

Oh don't pretend 'cause I don't care

I don't believe illusions, 'cause too much ain't for real

Stop your cheap comments, 'cause we know what we feel

[Chorus 2]

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty we're vacant

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty

A vacant

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty

And now

And we don't care

[Chorus 1]

There's no point in asking you'll get no reply

Oh just remember I don't decide

I got no reason it's all too much

You'll always find me out to lunch

[Chorus 2]

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty we're vacant

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty

We're vacant

Oh we're so pretty

Oh so pretty

And now

And we don't care

[Outro]

We're pretty

A pretty vacant

We're pretty

A pretty vacant

We're pretty

A pretty vacant

We're pretty

A pretty vacant

And we don't care

## References

1. ↑ Grow, Kory (27 October 2017). "Sex Pistols Break Down 'Never Mind the Bollocks' Track by Track". *Rolling Stone*.