Songfacts®:

• This is the second single from the British rock band Bush's fifth studio album, The Sea Of Memories. It was the band's first studio set in ten years, the first Bush album released on E1 Records and their first venture away from Interscope, who handled all of their previous releases.
• Frontman Gavin Rossdale told Spinner UK about the inspiration for the song: "I think just everyday dark clouds, dark clouds on the horizon. A look. A word. A gesture that can set the train careening off the track. That's what that is on the lyrical side. With the record I was trying to find a balance between Bush's people and also putting a new progression in there. With that song, it was strange because when I started playing the music to it, it all felt very comfortable. It seemed to be a very natural display of something more traditional in my arsenal. That's how that came about and the lyric just fit with that."
• When this reached #1 at Alternative Radio it became the first self-released song to ever reach the top of that chart.
• The line, "Medusa smiles, Judas lips," deals with "these figures from history that conjure up deception and backstabbing," Rossdale told Fuse. "But then it's 'Open arms and finger tips,' because I always like to bring things around. So, from that negative beginning, 'Open arms and finger tips, love bites and recompense, I'll be with you until the end,' is when it's kind of separating the bad people you've been with in your life and just concentrating on the good people in your life."