"This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us" is a song written by Ron Mael of the American pop group Sparks. It is the opening track on their 1974 album Kimono My House, and was the lead single from the album, reaching number 2 in the UK singles chart, where it stayed for two consecutive weeks. This song has become the highest charting for Sparks in the United Kingdom, and it was held off from the top spot by The Rubettes' bubblegum pop song "Sugar Baby Love".
Background
The original idea for the song was that after each verse Russell Mael would sing a movie dialogue cliché, one of which was "This town ain't big enough for both of us". They dropped the idea of having different phrases and instead used only the one in the title. The original working title of the song was "Too Hot to Handle". Winwood used distinctive Western movie-style gunshots on the recording after a suggestion from engineer Dave Hutchins. Hutchins added the sound effect after he felt the recorded track 'was missing something', sourcing the gunshots from a BBC sound effects LP 'borrowed' from his previous workplace at the corporation. It has been claimed that producer Muff Winwood bet with his friend Elton John that the song would become a top-five hit in the UK charts and that Elton John, saying it would not, lost the bet. In his Sparks biography Talent is an Asset, however, Daryl Easlea reports that this was a "great tale" propagated by the Mael brothers that is contradicted by Winwood himself – in fact, Winwood said that, unsure of how commercial the track would be, he played it to Elton John, who told him, "Listen, I'll bet you a hundred quid that that makes the Top 3". Winwood's wife agreed, and his doubts were allayed.
Musical style
The vocal sound on the single has been criticised as being "stylised". This may be because the song was written without any regard for the vocal style of Russell Mael. Songwriter Ron Mael has explained:
"This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both of Us" was written in A, and by God it'll be sung in A. I just feel that if you're coming up with most of the music, then you have an idea where it's going to go. And no singer is gonna get in my way.
Russell Mael has claimed in reply:
When he wrote "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both of Us", Ron could only play it in that key. It was so much work to transpose the song and one of us had to budge, so I made the adjustment to fit in. My voice ain't a "rock" voice. It's not soulful, in the traditional rock way; It's not about "guts". It's untrained, unschooled, I never questioned why I was singing high. It just happened, dictated by the songs. Ron has always written Sparks' lyrics and never transposed them into a rock key for me to sing. He always packed each line with words and I had to sing them as they were.
Re-recordings
An acoustic version of the song was recorded in 1985 for the B-side of the "Change" single. In 1997, Sparks recorded two new versions of the song for their album Plagiarism. The first was an orchestral reworking arranged and conducted by Tony Visconti which reinstated a verse that Winwood had cut from the original. The other was as a collaboration with Faith No More, which was released as a single and reached number 40 in the British singles chart.
British Whale released a version as his debut single in August 2005, which reached number 6 in the UK charts.
The track "Arabian Shamuru" on the 1991 Bon Voyage album by Japanese band Mahalik Halili uses almost exactly the same melody as "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us".
Arizona's The Format cover it in live concerts frequently, including it on their 2006 EPAnd Now I Hope You're Alright - Live in California.
Portuguese band Humanos in their concerts performed a live version, mashing it with "O Corpo É Que Paga" by Portuguese 1980's icon António Variações, which is available on their live DVD.
In live concerts, the Los Angeles/San Francisco glam rock band performed the song regularly during live performances beginning in 1987.
Sparks' 1997 album Plagiarism included two collaborations with Faith No More – "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us" and "Something for the Girl with Everything". Faith No More performed the song live during their 1997–1998 and reunion tours.
The song appears in a dream sequence in an episode of the British sitcomGreen Wing. The original track is mimed by two of the characters, Dr. "Mac" Macartney and Dr. Alan Statham, pretending to be Russell Mael and Ron Mael respectively. The original Sparks version of the song is heard in the 2010 movieKick-Ass. The song is used in episode 2 of the episodic video game series 2017’s Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
