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Never Let Me Down: "The song ‘Never Let Me Down’ is quite gentle and romantic. I’m very pleased with it. It was literally written and recorded overnight, whereas most of the others took a few weeks to put together and arrange. It was completely finished in 24 hours from the beginning to of the writing to the end of the arranging."
Day In, Day Out: "I guess it’s a reflection or indictment of the uncaring society. In the video it uses America as a focus, but you can take most affairs that happen in America as being of an international flavor anyway. I knew I was going to do something around that topic, but I had no idea it would focus itself around one particular area of Los Angeles, but quite obviously it is the situation there."
Time Will Crawl: "Science and humanity, basically, the idea of the bright kid who turns into a demonic scientist and creates this catastrophe".
Beat of Your Drum: "It’s a Lolita Number! [laughs] Reflection on young girls…Christ, she’s only 14 years old, but jail’s worth it!"
Zeroes: " ‘Zeroes’ is stripping away all the meanness of rock and coming back to the spirit with which one entered the thing. It’s the ultimate happy-go-lucky rock tune, based in the nonsensical period of psychedelia. So it’s a naivete song about rock, using a lot of cliches.
Glass Spider: "A mother-figure number! One’s feeling of isolation when you’re launched off into the world. You always think your mother’s there, but of course she never really is; however close you are to your parents, they can never be any nearer then they were when you were about five or six. ‘Mommy, come back ‘cos the water’s all gone’: the water’s kind of the substance of meaning of life."
Shining Star (Making My Love): "A strange little piece. Again, it reflects back-to-street situations, and how people are trying to get together in the face of so many disasters and catastrophes, socially around them, never knowing if they’re going to survive it themselves. The one thing they have got to cling on to is each other; although it might resolve into something terrible, it’s the only thing that they’ve got. It’s just a little love song coming out of that environment. A tribute to Smokey Robinson."
New York’s in Love: "A rather sarcastic song about New York [laughs], that real vain aspect of big cities. They’re so pompous and big and in love with themselves."
’87 and Cry: "It started off, when I was originally writing it, as a kind of indictment of Thatcher’s England, but then it took on all these surreal qualities of a pushy person eating the energies of others to get to where they wanted and leaving the others behind: ‘It couldn’t be done without dogs.’ It was a Thatcherite statement made through the eyes of a potential socialist, because I always remained a potential socialist–not an active one."
Too Dizzy: "That’s jealousy, isn’t it. A real jealous song. It’s a throwaway! I always thought it was better for Huey Lewis [laughs]! I was unsettled with that song, but it’s on the album anyway. It’s one of the first songs that Erdal Kizilcay and I wrote together, a sort of try-out to see how we sparred together as writers. I thought a real Fifties subject matter was either love or jealousy, so I thought I’d stick with jealousy because it’s a lot more interesting [laughs]."
Bang Bang: "Iggy Pop wrote that one. I think he’s one of the best around. Even though he’s staring to get through, he’s still terribly underrated, so I always try to do my bit, do something of his.
