- A Bad Dream - "A Bad Dream is the most emotional song on the record. It was based on a poem by W.B.Yeats, called "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", and I think it also came from visiting lots of battlefields and graveyards and so in France, which sounds very morbid, but that's the kind of thing I like to do on holiday! I've just always been really affected by... I guess still being a relatively young man, I still have a lot of empathy of people of my age and even younger, who are going off to war; and I guess the idea of going off to war has been in the air for the last couple of years, with Afghanistan and Iraq particular. Those seem like very distant things, but I think in Europe in particular the Second World War is still something that still looms quite largely in a lot of people's minds, and it certainly should do. I'd also been reading a book called "The New Confessions" by William Boyd, in where the protagonist of the book goes up in a hot air balloon to film the front line, and he gets shot down and captured. It just made me think a lot of people when they go off as young men, and when they come back - even if it's a couple of years later it's like they've become old, and all the things they left behind have changed. And it's something that you can never ever go back to being young again. And I guess it's just a very sad song.
We wanted to get a balance between a kinda dream sequence - it starts very quietly, and I love the idea of being in a plane, like a Spitfire or something, being so high up in the sky that you can't hear the guns below you and so on. And it's almost got a serene silence which is what this Yeats poem seemed to really express. The song starts very quietly, but it gets huge and angry as it goes on - the big distorted washy piano sound in the middle is a pretty vast sound and it's I guess an attempt to express all that anger bursting out." - Tim - Podcast 3 (30th May 2006)
- A Heart To Hold You - "It's a really lovely song and one that is very close to our hearts. When we were asked to do a Christmassy-type song for Radio 1 there were some awful cheesy Christmas songs and we really racked our brains to think of something we'd be alright covering. But, in the end, we thought we'd do something of our own - it has a Christmassy message of warmth and love and I think that's a really important thing." - Tom to Radio 1
- The song was only given a title the week of it first being played on radio (beginning of December 2004), and previously refered to as "The Bing Crosby One", "The Bing Crosby Song" or "The Bing Crosby Number" due to it sounding Christmassy, and Bing Crosby's assocation with Christmas (because of White Christmas)
- Allemande - "A dance in moderate duple meter first appearing in the early 16th century and was frequently followed by a more lively dance in triple meter or, in the 17th century, by the courante. In the 17th century it became a stylized dance type that was regularly used as the first movement of a dance suite. These allemandes are in a very moderate 4/4 time." - music definition. It doesn't really say much about the song, but that's what the word means! Source
- "Allemande" in French is also the feminine form of the noun "German"...
- Apparently Tim's told some fans that he saw some music on the family piano titled "Allemande", so was inspired by the title.
- Atlantic - "Well Atlantic was the first thing that we recorded for the record, and it was actually gonna be a b-side. It was weird - it was just a very very scrappy demo. To be honest, I don't think any of us had really thought that it could be a really great song, or a great piece of music or anything; but Richard started playing this weird thing on the drums - we had some drums from the demo and he started playing out-of-time with them, sort of half a beat behind them. And it created this weird, incredible drum pattern which was funky and industrial, and it just brought the whole song to life and it immediately started to sound amazing. It's a piece of music that I'm really really proud, and I think we're all really really proud of as a band. It's a great example of a piece of music that we've all contributed to, and it wouldn't be the song that it is unless we all put something special into it. The reason it's the first song on the record, is because it's got such an incredible atmosphere to it, and I guess it's about having a terror of being alone - it sets the mood of the record really well, both musically and lyrically." - Tim - Podcast 2 (22nd May 2006)
- Bedshaped - "bedshaped is about feeling that you've been 'left behind' by an old friend or lover. and about hoping that you'll be reunited one day so that you can live out the end of your lives together the way you started them. i guess there's some anger at a friend who wants to move on in search of new, exciting, more sophisticated things, leaving behind the simple things you used to share....and a hope that they'll eventually want to get away from the bright lights and come back home. it's a sad and angry song, but also full of hope. i hope that makes sense.
- I think i'm right in saying that in hospital when someone is ill or infirm and has to spend a lot of time in bed they can become 'bedshaped'. it sounds a bit depressing...well i guess it is a bit depressing in reality, but in the context of the song i wanted to suggest old age and frailty, along the lines that i mentioned before about two old friends coming back together in the twilight of their lives. it's great that you guys like bedshaped...it's a song that means a lot to us." - Tim - messageboard - Source
- "I remember the words for Bedshaped; lying in bed one night and they just suddenly all emerged and I wrote them all down, and then it was finished which was really good - I like it when that happens! The word 'bedshaped' - I don't know if it's a made up word, but my mum's always talking about people being bedshaped, just from spending too much time being bed-ridden basically. It's quite a sad image of someone stuck there, stuck in a bed, until they become completely useless and start to lose their humanity. But just that idea of crumbling and being really frail and decrepid is something that eventually happens to everyone. That, I guess was the basis for the song in a way. So whatever happens when you're younger, even if you go off in search of glamour and ambitious and exciting things; once you get to your really old age, you've got all that side of life that just disappears. - Tim - Strangers DVD
- Bend And Break - [Regarding "the other side" and "white light" references] "in bend and break that phrase is more about getting through a really dark state of mind and emerging into brighter, happier times. the old saying 'the darkest hour is just before the dawn' is very true and potent i think. people often say that with proper depression, things can seem unbearably awful as your thoughts run around each other in the dark of the night but when the sun rises you can get more perspective and see things in a more hopeful way. see patrick humphries' book on nick drake for his thoughts on how this phenomenon affected that great songwriter. anyway for me i've always loved the mornings...the day is new and full of possibilities. the song reminds me of when i was young and in the mornings i'd phone tom or richard or other friends and we'd make plans to meet up in town or play football or whatever. i still feel the same way...for example i alway write songs best early in the morning. " - Tim - messageboard - Source
- Broken Toy - "Broken Toy I really love, probably because it came together so quickly, and was really easy(!). But that's definitely a song about ... well, it's particularly a song about the relationship between me and Tom. We've known each other our whole lives and we've always had a very 'brotherly' relationship, and that yields all sorts of great positive things, but it also occasionally tips over into sort of bad things because you know how to cut each other more deeply than anyone else does. It's just a way of confronting that, I suppose - just the fact that our friendships were changing. I guess it's a plea to try to cling onto that and not just let it slip away and not do anything about it until it's too late. It's a very explicit way of dealing with that, and I think it's quite a good example of how the album was for us; when you can't even talk about those things in normal everyday life, it's quite hard to be singing about them in a song, but I guess it's just our weird way of dealing with things(!).
Yeah - Tom's singing a song that I've written about him. But I think the great thing about the way we make music is that anything that I write is almost reflected in what the other guys feel most of the time, and that's why things work so well for us creatively. There are lots of songs that I write that the other guys just don't get - they might mean a lot to me, but unless the song really touches a nerve with all three of us, we won't do anything with it basically. But yeah, Broken Toy is a really intense one for us. It's great to be able to sing about those things, and to play that music and feel that you're somehow dealing with those things on a really primal level." - Tim - Podcast 6 (19th June 2006)
- Can't Stop Now - "Can't Stop Now is about the feeling that you've been standing still sort of moping after someone, and suddenly snapping out of it and feeling that you've a lot of catching up to do, and you can't really hang around. At almost any expense you need to get out and start doing things. I think most of the song is quite well-intentioned. I think it's genuine, but then the last reprise bit undercuts it. You can never be sure what you're doing really. It's one of those things I think. It's probably about convincing yourself to some extent." - Tim - Strangers DVD
- Crystal Ball - "Our touring schedule over the last couple of years meant that we were on the road all the time, and were never kinda stopping to really appreciate what was going and just spend time having fun - just the three of us functioning as friends and as people, like you normally do. And I think we all started to recede slightly into this little world where we weren't really communicating or really expressing anything, and we weren't really feeling anything. And it kind of came to a head when we were in America in June last year and I remember sitting on the bus, and I was trying to write a song and I realised that I didn't have anything to say at all, and I didn't have any feelings about anything - good feelings or bad feelings. That was a really scary for me, because I've always had lots to say, and lots of opinions whether right or wrong. We then ended up having a massive row about something a couple of days later and it came out of that that we were all feeling this sense of numbness, this feeling of kinda fading away as people. And I just tried to write about that, and it ended up becoming Crystal Ball.
It's quite a chirpy song - it's a weird one. I've always loved bands (The Smiths is an example that spring to mind), bands that can write a song that's really energised and ... 'pop' I guess, but is also really meaningful, but also really powerful and sad. And Morrissey is just the king of that, and I think the Pet Shop Boys were another band that did that really well - and those were two of the first bands I ever got into, so I think that's still a big part of our music; and I guess Crystal Ball is probably the best example of that." - Tim - Podcast 5 (12th June 2006)
- Everybody's Changing - "It's kinda about being stuck in one place and watching everyone else around you moving along, and feeling a bit depressed with it all.... (in a good way of course!)" - Tom - London ULU gig - 09/03/04
- "Everybody's Changing is a song about something I think a lot of people will experience, which is when people's lives start going different ways and you're sitting there, thinking my friends are doing this, what I am I doing? What do I do with my life? I think things like that are quite common to people and are probably more important than a lot of things that people write songs about. I mean, we haven't written any songs about politics. I think things like your friends, communication and love affect peoples lives more on a daily basis than who's in charge of the budget!" - gig101 interview - Source
- "the song is about trying to work out where you are in the world, while some of the people around you are going off and doing different things. tim wrote it while we were really struggling to get anywhere as a band, and we were watching all our friends move away and get on with their lives, while we were stuck in battle getting nowhere, and wondering if we were doing the right thing. " - Richard - messageboard - Source
- "Everybody's Changing is definitely world-weary. I wrote that at a time when we were quite low. We'd given up our London dream and had to slink back to Battle. We were feeling really isolated as a band. All our friends were making their way in the world and we were back at square one. Also, everyone I knew was jettisoning who they had been and was trying to be cool. I didn't know whether to go with that or not. I decided to stay my geeky self." - Tim - Times interview
- "I guess the fact is that if you write about what you really feel, the chances are that a lot of people will probably feel the same way. So the things I've written about on the first record obviously are very personal either to me or to us as friends and a band, but by extension a lot of the songs are dealing with a things that are very recognisable to a lot of people - maybe in different contexts... Everybody's Changing is kinda written from the point of view of someone in a band, which is what we were, just frustrated with everyone who seemed to alter who they were. It's kind of an angry song, but again it's sympathetic - I can understand why people feel they have to change. I just felt when we were in our early 20s/mid 20s, suddenly I felt there was more peer pressure, and everyone was desperately trying to be cool, and desperately trying to leave behind who they had been before and try and reinvent themselves as socialites - London types. And it's just trying to dupe people, who know you weren't like that is just stupid; I find it insulting really, because it's so transparent and yet people try and hoodwink you in that way. But I think everyone is guilty of it, I'm probably guilty of it, so it is a sympathetic song." - Tim - Strangers DVD
- "I wrote Everybody's Changing some time in early 2002. I remember sitting at the piano at my Mum and Dad's house one evening and playing the piano riff, then writing a song to fit around the riff.
We were working on Bend And Break and some other songs at that time, and I didn't think Everybody�s Changing was as good a song, so I didn't put much effort into the demo. However when I played it to the Tom and Richard and our friends at BMG Publishing (who had just signed us), they all loved it, so we finished the lyrics and went to work on it properly." - Tim - keanemusic.com
- Fly To Me - "fly to me is possibly my favourite keane song. maybe that's just because it still feels quite secret and stuff, i don't know. but i was listening to it on a ferry the other day and it really brought a tear to me eye. i don't even know why....i think it just captures a feeling of missing people and wondering why life can't just be a bit simpler sometimes. reminds me of the song 'so far away' by carole king." - Tim - messageboard - Source
- Hamburg Song - "Hamburg Song was written in America - I seem to remember writing it on a guitar in the back of the bus. But the first time we ever got together and did a demo of it, was in Hamburg on a tour last year [it was 2004].We had a really great day - it was the first time we'd done any work on any new songs and we had a day off so we went into a studio and just worked on some new demos, and Hamburg Song was one of them. It was just labelled on the tape box as "Hamburg Song" and we never got round to changing it. Somehow the name seemed to fit really well with the song.
Lyrically I guess it's about... again, it's a bit like Atlantic, it's about a fear of what we've got slipping away and I guess it's a plea just to remember what a great thing it is to have a bond between people. And even if you all go off and you do different things and you make different friends and have all these adventures as people do - it's just a plea that at the end of it all you're still the backstop in someone's life, as it were.
When we demoed it up, we did it very very simply, and then started to play it live a little bit and we played it very very simply, and Tom's just playing an organ on it. And there was definitely a temptation to turn it into this big ballad, and we just felt ... we actually tried it; we thought we better try it, so we tried putting some drums on it, and that song is all about atmosphere - in fact the whole record, the most important thing was to capture an atmosphere. And we just felt that the best way to do that with Hamburg Song was the way that we'd done it to start off with, which was really really stripped back and simple, so we kept it that way." - Tim - Podcast 3 (30th May 2006)
- "Hamburg Song is definitely about a particular feeling of... You don't want someone's attention all the time, you don't want to be the star of the show all the time, but you just wanna be the kind of... what they consider to be their home. Even though you might only get a small proportion of their attention and time, they consider that small portion of time to be the most precious and the bit they look forward to the most. I guess it's about feeling that you're not really asking very much." - Tim - Strangers DVD
- Is It Any Wonder? - "It's probably the one song on the record that most expresses our dismay and confusion about what it means to be a British citizen, in terms of what our society's contributing to the world at large," Rice-Oxley explains. "It's very hard to make sense of why Britain feels it needs to sign up with George Bush's attacks on Iraq and the whole Afghanistan thing. It feels like there's a whole lot of trouble brewing up over Iran, and you just don't know where it's going to end. On a personal level, for people of our age, it's really unsettling." - Tim - RollingStone.com Source
- Is It Any Wonder? is probably the most 'rock' song that we've done so far, I think. I remember doing a demo of it in Cologne on the European tour, and desperately trying to finish it off in the studio and write all the words, so I could do a demo of it. And Cologne cathedral is a great structure that stands in the middle of the city: when the British bombed Cologne during the war, the cathedral was pretty much the only thing left unscathed in the centre of town, and I just thought it was an amazingly powerful image. I love the idea of the cathedral standing there, looking mournfully over the city.
The song generally is... I guess you could say it's a very political song. It's just trying to make sense of the fact that Britain could be attacking other countries on very devious grounds, when we've always grown up thinking that you're always a part of society that's essentially a power for good in the world. and I think a lot of people of our generation have suddenly found it very unsettling to start to feel that we've taken that for granted that we've always been contributing to a society is a power for a good, and suddenly you realise you realise that half the world really hates us(!) and on a personal level that makes you start to doubt yourself a bit I think.
The song is not an attempt at some sort of wide-sweeping political statement, it's just about just seeing things from a personal level - what are you supposed to believe, what is actually right? How can you work out what is the truth, and what is the right thing to do? And there's so many different opinions, and you're supposed to have an opinion on what your country is doing, and yet it is so hard to even begin to gather all the facts. It's really distressing thing for people of our generation I think, the feeling of not being able to do anything about that. I guess that was something we were all feeling very acutely in the song. And I think the sounds of the song sum that up in a very tangible way.
I suppose once we'd hit upon the idea of using the piano through loads of vintage effects, and trying to make it sound as far from a piano as possible, we started to think in terms of what we wanted it to sound like on a particular song. If I was trying to find a particular sound, I'd want it to sound like something like from a Beatles song, or a Smiths song, or anything really! On Is It Any Wonder? we were thinking that a kinda Jimi Hendrix riff would be a great way to start a song that had so much bustling confusion and anger in it...so that was basically my attempt to rip off Jimi Hendrix!" - Tim - Podcast 2 (22nd May 2006)
- Leaving So Soon? - "Leaving So Soon? was the last song written for the record, and it was pretty much the only song written in the studio. It was one of those songs that felt really good - it's got a motown-y feel to it I think. It's a weird one, I guess it's a kinda defense of the three of us in the band. I always get frustrated that I feel people are judging us too quickly sometimes - not as a band, but as people just cos we're not brash and wacky and naturally bubbly. It can happen to anyone, people judge you too quickly rather than actually bothering to find out what's below the surface. For me it's quite a funny song actually because it's so sarcastic and bitchy, but it's quite melodramatic - it's definitely got a twinkle in its eye!" - Tim - Podcast 1 (15th May 2006)
- On A Day Like Today - "This song is about not being able to say the right thing, and the more you say, the more you fuck it up" - Tom - UK tour, October/November 2004
- "This is a song about two people, who are completely in love with each other, but for whatever reason just manage to completely fuck it up" - Tom - Bristol gig - 19th January 2005
- Nothing In My Way - "Nothing In My Way came out of listening to a lot of the poppier end of hiphop on the radio, just kinda driving around (I was driving up and down to my parents house a lot as that was the only place I could go to play the piano) and I think particularly the groove of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem got stuck in my head. I think it's still one of the greatest pop songs of my lifetime, it's such a fantastic track. And I guess I like the idea of trying to do something similar. I guess it was never gonna sound like Eminem, but the groove of it was basically lifted from that, and the song just came from jamming around on a piano. So I guess as a result of all that, I guess it's a much funkier and kinda 'blacker' song than most Keane songs, and that was something that we really wanted to get into the record generally. We were listening to a lot of classic motown as well, much more driving rhythms and you can hear that in a lot of the songs. So I'm really proud to have a few songs that people can at least nod their heads to!
Lyrically Nothing In My Way is I guess about really being in denial - I hate it when people refuse to acknowledge their own feelings and reactions to something, because they see it as being a weakness to say that they're scared, or upset about something, or whatever. The song's actually written about some people I know who are married, and their marriage was essentially just bringing a lot of misery to both of them, but for some reason they just refused to acknowledge it. I hate the idea of people being so much in denial that they're prepared to almost let their lives fall apart rather than acknowledge what's going on." - Tim - Podcast 1 (15th May 2006)
- Put It Behind You - "Put It Behind You is another early song on the record, from about the same time as Atlantic I think. I think my instincts at the time were going very 'Strokes-y' - it's a very 'Strokes-y' sounding song, and we liked the idea of keeping things more raw, a bit crunchier. There's not very much on there, it's a pretty simple rock song and I love that about it. It sounds very different from Is It Any Wonder for example - it's much simpler, just 'bash it out' rock song. But it's still got some really cool sounds in there, and it's a really kinda funky track and I think it's also the most motown song. The classic motown influence is probably most visible on that one.
Lyrically, it was around that time Richard was going through a messy fall-out from a break-up with a girl that he'd been going out with for seven or eight years... so I guess it was a kinda friendly slap in the face or something! I think Tom and I were both feeling that he was getting really bogged down in this world of regret, and looking backwards all the time, and we just wanted to offer a way of picking him up and moving forward." - Tim - Podcast 4 (5th June 2006)
- Somewhere Only We Know - "It's about being able to draw strength from a place or experience you've shared with someone. I think its an idea a lot of people can relate to." - Tim - The Mirror
- "We've been asked whether 'Somewhere Only We Know' is about a specific place, and Tim has been saying that, for him, or us as individuals, it might be about a geographical space, or a feeling; it can mean something individual to each person, and they can interpret it to a memory of theirs... It's perhaps more of a theme rather than a specific message... Feelings that may be universal, without necessarily being totally specific to us, or a place, or a time..." - Richard - Rockfeedback.com Source
- "The set kicks off with "Somewhere Only We Know," a song Rice-Oxley says came from hammering away on the piano. "I was thinking of something like David Bowie's 'Heroes,' which you drive along to a really rocking beat," he says. "I really like the bridge and it's great fun to play live. It was one of the first things we recorded for the album." - Tim - Billboard.com Source
- She Has No Time - "I always find this quite a hard thing to tell people about, cos I don't know how an audience is going to react...but this song is basically about being in love with someone and they're not in love with you, and this was something that happened to me a few years ago *crowd awws* But anyway, picture it in your minds. Anyway, this fellow here [Tim] wrote this song, as a way of sort of comforting me at the time *crowd awws and cheers* Anyway, it really is a song that means so much to me, because it was basically Tim putting his arm around my shoulder and saying 'Don't worry, this happens to everyone at some stage'." - Tom - Leeds Met gig - 24th April 2004
- "Tim wrote this song, about a girl who broke my heart after giving me one of the best weekends of my life and then never phoning me again." - Tom - Strangers DVD
- Snowed Under - "This song's about everything getting on top of you" - Tom - Birmingham gig - 3rd March 2004
- "It's just a nice way of summing up what you think about in your life. Eventually everything you do is made up of hopes and fears. And that balance between hopes and fears and the fusion between the two we really liked." - Tim - Billboard.com Source
- The line "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." (line 252) from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" helped to inspire "But the time has come and I'm glad it's over" - Source
- Sunshine - [This song is about] "looking after stuff you love" - Tom - Cologne gig - 17th October 2004
- "It was the only song on album written on the guitar. It was written in France, it's probably got a bit of the French atmosphere in it. ... We wrote it out in the garden in France, and then rushed in and recorded it." - Tim - Undercover interview - Source (http://www.undercover.com.au/idol/keane2004.html)
- The Frog Prince - "It's a reaction to a certain singer who seemed to make it his mission to slag us off at every point, but really didn't seem to be being true to himself, or to have understood what we are. We don't want to get into some tabloid slanging match, but we just felt like he was acting a part, and really pretending to be someone he is not. We really feel that you don't have to be all glitzy and tabloid to make good music, and that there's a bond between musicians and artists that should be held up - why not talk about a band you love or a song that inspired you?" - Richard - ilikemusic.com - Source
- "Well another theme that runs through the record is the idea of a surreal and sinister kinda fairytale world gone wrong. And that runs through A Bad Dream, Crystal Ball, Broken Toy and the whole thing of The Iron Sea definitely has a slightly macabre unreal feel to it, and I think The Frog Prince is the most literal expression of that. Again, a bit like Leaving So Soon?, it was written on behalf of all three of us. It was inspired by a conversation that Tom and I were having in a slightly drunken state in a hotel in Toronto, and we were talking about someone in another band who we felt was a really talented songwriter and really intelligent and talented person, but we felt he was busy bad-mouthing us and every other band that was around it seemed. It was very frustrating to see him go from a cool great songwriter in a small indie band, to suddenly becoming this person who's playing the part of the arrogant rock star. And I guess we in some stupid way felt that was some sort of betrayal, because you feel that you're part of a community of bands and people who started at kind of at the same time. So that song was a defence of us, and it's a plea not to betray who you actually are, in the hope of impressing other people. And I guess it's using the idea of this sinister fairytale as a way of manifesting the weird world of the media and so on, and if you wander into it thinking you can say whatever you want then people encourage you to play a part. But they'll just as soon stab you in the back, as give you a big hug and tell you how wonderful you are. It's very dangerous game to play, and it ends up with you ceasing to be who you really are. And we've always, rather naively, tried to get by on being completely who we are, and being completely honest about who we are and being completely honest about who we are - and a lot of people really respect that, but on the other hand it leaves you exposed, you don't have a shield up of any sort; so that's what the song is about." - Tim - Podcast 6 (19th June 2006)
Is about Johnny Borrell (lead singer of Razorlight).
"In fact, probably not even 'The Frog Prince' - the bitter spiralling finale to second album 'Under The Iron Sea', complete with the kind of Johnny Borrell-baiting lyrics Luke Pritchard would never have had the balls to write: 'An old fairytale told me/ A toad will be our king.'" - NME Wednesday 16th August 2006 - Source
"Will the identity of 'The Frog Prince' ever be revealed?
It was correctly identified by an NME journalist in a piece about us a few weeks ago." - Source
- The Iron Sea - "I think The Iron Sea is the key track on the record - I guess because it doesn't have any lyrics, it's entirely about the atmosphere and the emotion that's expressed by the music. It's a very suffocating song, and it sounds very ominous. I find it really thrilling to listen to it, I really love it - it just sounds so oppressive and scary but in a slightly thrilling way(!), and that's basically what we tried to achieve with the whole record." - Tim - Podcast 4 (5th June 2006)
- The Way You Want It - "the way you want it is definitely a bit white album-influenced. i used to be an obssessive beatles fan and learned most of songs by heart....that's basically how i learned to play the piano. you're right about martha my dear and honey pie. i think it probably has a bit of van morrison in it too. maybe we'll play it for you guys one of these days. " - Tim - messageboard - Source
- This Is The Last Time - "TITLT is indeed a confusing song, which is actually something i regret, but the meaning is hard to explain quickly and simply. here's my attempt.
it's mainly about regret. i was thinking about how you can have a huge amount of affection for someone and yet not have that magic spark that makes you feel like you're in love. whenever i hear the song i feel it's a snapshot of the moment of two people saying their goodbyes...i can actually see them stood facing each other. what a rotten moment that is eh.
anyway so you have a bond with someone but you don't want to stay with them forever. so you decide to go. but you're not saying 'i hate you and i'm leaving'...you're trying to say 'i think you're great but i've seen that there's something more perfect and magical out there for me and i need to find it. but i will always be your friend if you need me.' does that make sense? so the bridge ('something i wasn't sure of...etc') is about the sense that there's something more magical to be found. making that decision to leave something comfortable to search for something perfect is difficult, so the alternating lines of the chorus are almost a debate going on in your head...you're saying 'this is the last time we'll share these intimate moments, time will make things better, and of course you can turn to me whenever you want to, i don't mind.' if you split the chorus into two parts using alternate lines it makes sense! i guess the feeling of conflict within yourself and the difficulty of making that decision is what the song is really about. it's not sarcastic or anything but it is certainly confusing. sorry!
i like trying to write about confusion and grey areas because life is not normally very clear-cut and simple, especially when it comes to the way people interact. hence the album's title. how many songs are there at the moment about how you're not good enough for me so **** you? the eamonn/frankee nonsense being an obvious example but look at any number of recent hits. how often is life really that simple? i guess that's why 'dry your eyes' was such a popular song...it talks about the confusion and mess of breaking up, and that's a reality that people recognise." - Tim - messageboard - Source
- "This Is The Last Time is a weird one. I feel that it's a very well-intentioned song, and the idea behind it is good, but I don't feel like I really said what I wanted to say in a very clear way, basically. The song is about being in a very comfortable relationship where you feel a lot of affection towards someone. It's about feeling that's all great and you don't want to hurt this person, but at the same time you feel like you wanna get out there and find something that's more kinda magical, and a real passionate love; it's not just about being cosy and comfortable, it's about finding something that really sort of makes you feel alive and lights up your life every day. So it's about the dilemma of having to leave that person behind, and go off in search of something that's more kinda unknown, and just a romantic idea. But at the same time it's having to try and say that to the person you're leaving behind, and how to explain that - obviously it's a difficult thing to do. My kinda view of things isa little bit ... I tend to always be looking for the more difficult and confusing things. Whenever I start off writing a song that's kinda quite happy and positive, I always end up starting to undermine it and writing lyrics that undermine that, and by the time I've got to the end of the song it's much more full of doubt." - Tim - Strangers DVD
- Try Again - "Try Again - that was another song that I actually wrote at home rather than on the bus, when we had a break in touring and I just remember being really pleased with it, because I wrote it in one of those periods when I was convinced I was never going to write a decent song ever again - probably being very melodramatic about the whole thing. But you do get into those sorts of periods of writers block, and Try Again just came out quite easily. And I didn't really know whether it was any good or not, but I played it to Tom and when we were in Stockholm last year we did a demo of it, and I remember sitting in the control room when Tom was singing it, and just getting absolutely goosebumps from hearing him sing it for the first time. It just transformed the song into this beautiful modern love song, and that was a real moment in the story of the album because it suddenly started to feel like things were coming together, and that we could still create music together in a really exciting way - so it's one of my favourites just from a personal point of view.
Without me really wanting it to, it came out as a very modern ... - I always think about it as being a commuter's love song. There's something weird about that feeling of being on a train really really late at night when there's just a handful of you there, and I always wonder what everyone's story is - especially people who've been to work and probably got up at some horrendous hour of the morning, and they're traipsing back to their home somewhere in the suburbs. And it always seems to me, as if youth has started to be replaced by a dreary routine, and with that all the hopes and dreams of being a young person gradually, without even noticing, they start to ebb away; and a love that's at the start of the marriage or whatever it is, just starts to disappear. And it seems like there's something seriously fundamentally wrong with the way we conduct our lives in Britain definitely - it's probably the same all over the world - and it always makes me really sad, and I guess the idea of the song is just as if... when it gets to the middle 8 of the song, it's as if your eyes opened for a moment and you suddenly realise you've waited so much time and want to have one chance kinda grab it back and make up for all that lost time. It's a really sad song, but it's one of the few songs on the record that has a sort of glimmer of hope(!)." - Tim - Podcast 5 (12th June 2006)
- We Might As Well Be Strangers - "This song is kinda about being forced to be away from someone you really love." - Tom - London Basement gig - 26th February 2004
- "This is a song about not being in love with somebody anymore." - Tom - London Hammersmith gig - 28th March 2004
- "As you get older you realise that things just get more complicated and it's just never a simple 'everything's delightful' - I mean I find that I feel very happy with that side of my life, but at the same time there always bad things and always difficult things, and I'll always like taking those and expanding on them and thinking where they might go and using those as ideas for writing. I don't know if that just means I'm a 'glass half empty' person or whatever, but in a way those are the most interesting things to write about - it's not particularly interesting to write a song about how 'everything's really lovely'. I think people are just very interesting, and those sorts of funny things that people say and do, and you don't really know if they're good or bad, but they're just weird. The way people behave to each other is so strange. We Might As Well Be Strangers is definitely one of my favourites songs I've written because it's so ... unbelievably depressing. I feel that it builds up and it just sort of explodes, it's like it smoulders along for a while and then there's a big cry of frustration, and then it just hangs its head, and then goes back to the "for all I know of you now" bit. It's a very sad song. - Tim - Strangers DVD
- Your Eyes Open - "It's a slightly unusual song for Keane... It was basically saying (it's a bit like Can't Stop Now... it's about eventually waiting and waiting and eventually saying "well fuck you then, and sooner or later you'll realise that we might have had something good". It's quite a simple song in a way. It is just a conflict I guess, it is a paradox thing where you can be completely mad about someone and sort of desperately want them to feel the same way about you, and yet they don't and eventually... It's a classic thing really, isn't it? I probably had different pre-occupations, I mean that's definitely about a particular person. Again it's a classic Keane thing where it doesn't quite add up - where I would have loved to have said it to that person and yet at the same time, I think what I was really [...] willing myself to actually feel that way... whereas in fact I don't think I ever did really feel that way. So maybe the whole song is an attempt at pulling the wool over your own eyes." - Tim - Strangers DVD
