The first single to be released from the album was "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)" in February 1984, its subtitle alluding to the Aretha Franklin song "I Say a Little Prayer" which producer Arif Mardin had also worked on. Asked about the change in musical direction Green admitted, "if you'd played me 'Wood Beez' six years ago I think I'd have spat at it or something. But I like change." He described the song as "very complicated, it's the whole question of what pop is; its relationship to language, power and politics. It's also a question of music's transgression and abuse of some of the rules of language. Aretha was singing what are arguably inane pop songs and had left her gospel roots. But she sang them with a fervour, a passion, though I hate to use that word because it's been hideously tarred in recent usage. To a committed materialist whose interest had come round to language again – perhaps because of a bankruptcy in Marxism to deal with ideology or any artistic community – hearing her was as near to a hymn or a prayer as I could get. Obviously I couldn't make that point in a three minute pop song."