"Come to Daddy" is a track by the British electronic music producer Richard D. James, released under his main pseudonym Aphex Twin. It was released as a single through Warp Records on 6 October 1997, coinciding with the lengthier extended play release of the same name. A music video for the song was released, which ranked at number one on Pitchfork's Top 50 Music Videos of 1990s list. In October 2011, NME placed the song at number 42 on its "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years" list.[3] The song peaked at number 10 on the Danish Singles Chart and number 36 on the UK Singles Chart.
Background
James noted his thoughts on the song in a 2001 interview with Index Magazine, notably being uninterested in its popularity.
"'Come to Daddy' came about while I was just hanging around my house, getting pissed and doing this crappy death metal jingle. Then it got marketed and a video was made, and this little idea that I had, which was a joke, turned into something huge. It wasn't right at all."[4]
After its successful release, James claimed that he removed the record from circulation for one week, hoping to prevent it from reaching number one; it peaked at 36.[4]
The video opens with an old woman (played by Coral Lorne) walking a dog in a grimy, industrial setting. The dog urinates on an abandoned television lying on the pavement, causing it to sputter unexpectedly into life, and a distorted and warping headshot of Richard D. James chants the lyrics. This unleashes a spirit, accompanied by a gang of small children, all of whom bear James' grinning face and who appear to inhabit the abandoned buildings. The children go around wreaking havoc, trashing an alley and chasing a man into his car. The thin man (played by Al Stokes)[citation needed] emerges from the television, screams in the woman's face, then gathers the children around him.
"Come to Daddy" was used in the television series Master of None in a scene where Aziz Ansari's character Dev imagines himself as a parent to two bratty children.[9] The song was also used at the end of the Joel Schumacher film 8mm. Earlier in the film, the music video is seen playing in the background on a television set. The song (and/or album) is mentioned in Frank Ocean's 2017 single "Provider" following the line "Stiff smile just like I'm Aphex Twin".[10]
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