Ready for the Floor

Goddard built the sketch at home, with a computer and a little gear beside his bed, and played it to the others while they were working on another song. The beat, the main chord pattern and even the drums came from Arturia's Modular V, a software Moog Modular. The shuffle came from UK garage, which Goddard said they were all into at the time. A wandering Poly Evolver riff reminds him of the Coronation Street theme, and other sounds come from a Casio keyboard Taylor bought him at a car boot sale for two pounds. XLR8R described the track as heavily produced and edited, with melodies drawn in on screen.

The repeated line about a number one guy is taken from Tim Burton's Batman (1989), from the scene where Jack Nicholson's Joker confronts Jack Palance's crime boss. Taylor sings it as praise for Goddard rather than a threat, and said the words are partly about breaking tension and communicating. Goddard told NPR it was meant purely as an upbeat pop song. A 2007 story that it had been written for Kylie Minogue was denied by the band: the song was finished first, and NME reported that Minogue had not heard it.

Single and video

Released as the album's second single on 28 January 2008, it reached six in Britain, the band's highest-charting single, and went silver. It was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 51st Grammys, losing to Daft Punk, and Pitchfork ranked it the third best track of 2008. Nima Nourizadeh directed the video, his fourth and last for the band, with Taylor switching between a mild-mannered tech wizard and the Joker. It won Best Editing at the 2008 UK Music Video Awards. Doyle put the song's appeal down to the directness between thought and expression.

Live

First played at the 9:30 Club in Washington on 21 April 2007, almost a year before the album, it is the band's second most played song after Over and Over, logged 388 times on setlist.fm. At Glastonbury in 2008 Wiley sang its opening line and led the band into it, and it closed their NPR Tiny Desk set in 2024. Live it has sometimes ended with an outro from William Onyeabor's Good Name. Mella Dee remixed it in 2025, and his dub appears on the best-of Joy in Repetition. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official video, directed by Nima Nourizadeh.