“We were courting Rick Rubin, who told us he’d listened to it with Tom Petty. ‘Wow!’ Tom said. ‘Now that’s something you don’t hear every day’”: Jet on the making of Are You Gonna Be My Girl and how it ended up in an iPod ad

Sometimes dismissed as a pale imitation of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life, Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl has, nonetheless, carved out its own place in music history. Now more than 20 years old, it remains a house party and wedding staple, having ridden in the slipstream of The Strokes to become a millennial anthem.

Now, in conversation with The Guardian, Jet’s lead singer and co-songwriter Nic Cester has revealed that, even before it was finished and became a hit, Are You Gonna Be My Girl seemed to resonate with a couple of very famous names.