The album was recorded over the period of a month, during which the group rented a home with a pool, which made them "[feel] like rock stars." The album was largely recorded live in the studio's main tracking room, with vocals overdubbed in one week later. Mike Stewart engineered the sessions, and was credited as the album's co-producer. Beattie suggested incorporating an accordion in the song, and lent Genaro one to learn how to use over the course of a weekend. He only improved at the instrument enough to play the melody with his right hand, and Beattie overdubbed the left-handed part himself. The final piece of recording was double-tracking the full-band chorus at the song's conclusion. Beattie found the effect amusing, comparing it to the Sherman Brothers' song "It's a Small World". For Genaro's guitar solo, Beattie attempted to capture Genaro's original demo track, which was poorly-recorded. To achieve an imperfect sound, Beattie pushed the compression on the mix using a 1176 Peak Limiter. Music video The "gritty" and "low-budget" music video was partially filmed at the abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Parts of the video were filmed at Zipperhead, "a popular counterculture store on Philly's South Street" which is mentioned in the song. It was directed by Adam Bernstein. The video was first added to MTV's rotation the week it reached its peak position on the Billboard charts; peaking at number one on the channel's Dial MTV request list. Several years later, the song saw a resurgence in popularity when it was featured in a segment of MTV's animated series Beavis and Butt-Head, in which the titular duo criticized the band's lax attitude and numerous mistakes and Butt-Head noted on seeing the video's conclusion where the eponymous woman and a band member steal a man's car and drive away "a real punk rock girl would eat this guy alive". MTV included the video among its annual yearbook of videos from 1988 on its website, calling it among the "biggest, best, most memorable music videos". Commercial performance and reception "Punk Rock Girl" was first issued as a 7" single in the U.S. by Engima in December 1988. It debuted on Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart on January 7, 1989 at position 27; it spent ten weeks on the chart, peaking at number eleven on February 4, 1989. It was issued as a single in the UK with cover