The chorus of the song, "You could blow with this, or you could blow with that", is a homage to the Black Sheep song "The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)", which has a similar chorus. The lines "Walk without rhythm/and it won't attract the worm" quote the science fiction novel Dune, while the line "tone of my voice" may be the titular weapon, as used by some of the book's characters.[3] The line "halfway between the gutter and the stars" refers to a line in Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan: "We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars", and was also used as the album title.
On the album, the song segues from "Retox" and thus the ending of "Retox" is on this track. At 5:06 on the "single version", the last second (5:05) gets repeated many times until it finishes at 5:36. On the album, the last two seconds get repeated until 5:23, and scratching sounds start at 5:14 until the conclusion at 5:45. The single version and album version also have several other differences, including the ordering of vocal snippets towards the five-minute mark.
Music video
The "Weapon of Choice" video, featuring Christopher Walken, is particularly acclaimed for its choreography.
The music video was filmed in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel (now the L.A. Grand Hotel Downtown) in Los Angeles in December 2000. Directed by Spike Jonze, it features actor Christopher Walken, who trained as a dancer in musical theatre before his acting career. Walken had asked Jonze to film his dancing, and Jonze suggested that he participate in the video.[4] Fatboy Slim had originally been scheduled to have a cameo in the video, replacing Walken in the harness shots, but was unavailable that weekend because his wife, Zoe Ball, was giving birth.[4]
In the video, Walken is relaxing in a chair in a deserted hotel lobby when he hears the song being played from a radio on a cleaning cart nearby. He begins to dance around the hotel before getting in an elevator, leaping off the balcony, and flying around the mezzanine. At the end, he returns to the chair and sits back down.
The "Weapon of Choice" video won six awards at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.[5] Walken was awarded one of MTV's "Moonmen" for Best Choreography. The clip was also ranked number one on a list of the top 100 videos of all time by VH1 in April 2002 compiled from a music industry survey.[6] The Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt has also danced in a version of the video directed by Malik Bendjelloul.[7][8][9] In 2012, British comedian and presenter Rowland Rivron also won charity TV show Let's Dance for Sport Relief with his reenactment of the video's choreography.[10]
Walken has cited admiration for Jonze as one of his main reasons for appearing in the video, which he also welcomed as a chance to do "something different". He also noted that as a trained tap dancer, dancing to electronic music suited him well.[11]
The music video enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the 2020s following the announcement of Walken's casting as Shaddam IV in Dune: Part Two.[12][13] The song prominently features lyrics that reference Dune, though it had no impact on Walken's casting.[14] In an interview with GQ, Walken stated that he had not been aware of the connection between the song and Dune prior to appearing in the film.[15]
