Plagiarism was not successful across Europe like its predecessor Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins had been, and did not chart significantly in any territory. The two singles performed well enough to register in the lower regions of the UK Singles Chart. The first single from the album was "The Number One Song In Heaven", the single version did not include the vocals of Jimmy Somerville, it reached #70 in October 1997.

Sparks is the vehicle for the skewed pop smarts and wise-guy wordplay of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, Los Angeles natives who spent their childhood modeling young men's apparel for mail-order catalogs. In 2015, Sparks recorded a collaborative album with U.K. indie rock outfit Franz Ferdinand; billing themselves as FFS, they released a self-titled album that year, which the groups supported with an international concert tour. Sparks returned to more familiar territory with the 2017 album Hippopotamus, a set of witty and pointed pop tunes dominated by Ron's multiple keyboards and Russell's faux-operatic vocals.

В марте 2015 года было объявлено об образовании супергруппы FFS совместно со Sparks. 19 июня 2015 года вышел одноименный дебютный альбом. Альбом записан в течение 15-дневной сессии в конце 2014 года в Лондоне. Продюсером записи стал Джон Конглтон. Для продвижения альбома было выпущено три сингла: «Johnny Delusional» (13 апреля 2015), «Call Girl» (28 мая 2015) и «Police Encounters» (23 октября 2015).