Mogwai Recruit Iggy Pop for New Song “Underground”

Mogwai have announced a new compilation called Happy Tears, which will feature highlights and rarities across the group’s 31-year history as well as a new track starring sinewy rock legend/Stuart Braithwaite’s personal hero, Iggy Pop.

On “Underground,” Pop speaks from a robot’s POV—“I am a robot/And I am unhappy/I have been designed/To make money/But I want to make love”—before addressing a range of seemingly random topics (blowjobs, shrewd producers, the Rolling Stones, how it’s “great to be a nepo kid”). Happy Tears arrives January 8 via Rock Action. It will be released alongside Happy Tears: The Story of Mogwai, a new audio documentary about the band’s rise.

“Hearing the Stooges had been a life-changing moment for me,” Braithwaite wrote in his 2022 memoir Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth about his love of Iggy Pop, adding, “I had a VHS video of Iggy playing live and I watched it over and over. His performance was unlike anything or anyone I’d seen before. The spectacle was great but it was his voice and songs that really captured me.”

“I’ve always liked Mogwai,” Pop wrote in a statement. “The opening of the track reminded me of the crushing modern loneliness. The sung vocal, which was arranged by Matt Sweeney, felt like it was made for someone who is pissed off and doesn’t mind saying so.”