Empty wooden chair under stage spotlight — AI art by @DavidP

**Stealers Wheel — "Stuck in the Middle with You" (1973)** --- Written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan in just half an hour as a joke, "Stuck in the Middle with You" was recorded at Apple Studios in London and produced by the legendary duo Leiber and Stoller. The track sold over a million copies worldwide. Ironically, Rafferty was so frustrated with the music industry that he actually quit the band before the song became a global hit, needing to be heavily persuaded to return to the group once it scaled the charts. In 1992, the song was given an indelible, permanent place in cinema history by director Quentin Tarantino in his debut masterpiece, Reservoir Dogs. Used during a notoriously graphic, tension-filled torture scene involving a lone wooden chair, the upbeat, cheerful hand-claps and casual acoustic strumming of the track formed a shocking, darkly humorous contrast to the violence on screen. Tarantino famously revealed that the song was such an organic fit that the actors auditioned using it, cementing it as one of the greatest uses of pop music in cinematic history. The band was plagued by constant lineup changes, poor legal management, and creative friction between the two main songwriters. They officially contracted into a duo and recorded two more albums, Ferguslie Park and Right or Wrong, but neither could escape the overwhelming shadow of their accidental debut smash, leading to their permanent disbandment by 1975.

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