‘O BABY’ was the last song that SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES wrote in the writing period with John Cale on producer duties in April 1994, London, UK.
According to Siouxsie her inspiration for the lyrics came from “…an article in Marie Claire about baby beauty pageants, this sick kind of small America thing where really pushy parents push their four-year-olds into these pageants.”
The track was recorded in May 1994 at Wessex Studios (Highbury, London, UK), engineered by Martin Brass and mixed for the album by Mark Saunders. It was released on 28 December 1994 as the leading single off ‘THE RAPTURE’ album in UK. For the cd single, the track was remixed by John Cale in June 1994 at his Skyline Studios in New York, aptly titled ‘Manhattan mix’.
The promo video was shot in November 1994 by Australian film director John Hillcoat, known for his movie ‘GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL DEAD’ and also for his video work with Nick Cave and other artists. The Banshees called him after seeing the video he made for the track ‘BLUME’ by Einsturzende Neubauten.
The promo video for ‘O BABY’ was produced by Mary Ann Janedo of ‘Oil Factory’ Production Co, (which has changed its name to ‘Factory Films’ since 2005), with Rob Grant on post-production.
The idea for the video was a real baby beauty pageant to be documented by the director “…as a fly-on-the-wall kinda thing” with Siouxsie “…just plonked in there as one of the contestants sort of”. For that reason, Siouxsie with the video crew flew to Flagstaff, Arizona, US where such a beauty pageant was taking place in November 1994.
The final result was a video in which according to drummer Budgie “…there’s no lip-synching, no dance sequences, no guns, no cars, everything you could possibly see all day long on MTV is not in there, apart from natural born performers.”
‘O BABY’ first entered the “UK Top75 Singles” chart on 07 January 1995 at #34, which was its highest position, thus making it the lowest chart placing for a lead-off single in the Banshees long history. It stayed at its peaking position for 1 week and then dropped successively to #49 (on Jan 14th) and #69 (on Jan 21st) in the following 2 weeks. It remained for 6 more weeks in the “UK Top200 Singles” before exiting the UK chartboard for good.
In USA, it first appeared in the ‘Hot Modern Rock Tracks’ on 18 February 1995. After a 7 weeks staying in total and having reached its highest position at #21 on March 4th, it exited the Billboard charts, last seen in there on April 1st 1995.

[Note: 'Extended Mix' audio by Peter Routley, thank you Peter! Video re-made by me.]