Angst in My Pants

Atlantic released Angst in My Pants on 29 March 1982 in both the US and UK. It was the second album Sparks made with the backing band of Bob Haag on guitar, Leslie Bohem on bass and David Kendrick on drums, with James Goodwin adding synthesizers. Reinhold Mack, credited as Mack, produced it at Musicland Studios in Munich in association with Giorgio Moroder Enterprises, the second and last time they worked together. It was the last album to show Ron wearing his toothbrush moustache on the cover.

The title track came last. The album was a song short after everything else had been recorded, and in a hotel in Munich Ron came up with a new melody and attached the title of a song they had dropped. The album was not a success in the UK and reached number 173 on the Billboard 200. I Predict reached number 60 on the Hot 100 in May 1982, their first entry on that chart, and the band played it and Mickey Mouse on Saturday Night Live on 15 May. Angst in My Pants and Eaten by the Monster of Love were used in the film Valley Girl in 1983. Pitchfork's Stuart Berman picked the title track as the best of the early-1980s singles.