Stuck in the Middle with You
"Stuck in the Middle with You" (sometimes known as "Stuck in the Middle") is a song written by Scottish musicians Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan and 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 with You" 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 (i.e. the clowns and jokers would be all the music executives and hangers on), and performed as a parody of Bob Dylan's paranoia (the vocal impression, subject, and styling were so similar, listeners have wrongly attributed the song to Dylan since its release). 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 (who had by then left the band), 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. In popular culture. The song is used in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 debut film "Reservoir Dogs", during the scene in which the  character Mr. Blonde (played by Michael Madsen) taunts and tortures bound policeman Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz) while singing and dancing to the song. In an interview with "Rolling Stone", Tarantino recalled: "That was one of those things where I thought [the song] would work really well, and [during] 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!' " The song was featured in "The Wonder Years", season 6 Episode 9, "The Test". Alternative rock band Lazlo Bane covered the song for their 2007 cover album "Guilty 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 (With You)," 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 (the Sock Puppet) with one of his feathers while the song is playing to find out where Very Bad Santa (Joseph D. Reitman) is, how it  happened to him, and why he kidnapped Hailey Hansen (Bryce Lorenzo). In one episode of the show "Malcolm 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 season 11, episode 8 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 2020 TV commercial for IBM. In one episode of the show "Gilmore Girls", the song is played at a Quentin Tarantino-themed party. The song was used in "" in 2020 for the montage when "Borat" is in the rednecks' house. Cover versions. A cover version by Grace Potter has been used as the theme song for the Netflix series "Grace and Frankie" since its debut in 2015 and appears in full on the  Grace and Frankie (Original Television Soundtrack). English singer Louise recorded a cover that was released on 27 August 2001, and reached number four on the UK Singles Chart in September 2001. 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 2019, Joshua Lee Turner released a YouTube cover of the song "Stuck in the Middle With You." with Turner providing vocals and bass guitar, Reina del Cid as vocalist  and playing acoustic guitar, Toni Lindgren sliding on the electric guitar and Carson McKee providing percussion, backup vocals and a hidden tambourine. As of September 2020 the video has over 4 million views.