Songfacts®:

• The "private universe" is your own little world where you're in a state of equanimity - your happy place. When Crowded House frontman Neil Finn was a kid, this was an apple tree that he would climb and spy on the neighbors. Thus the lines:
  
  The highest branch on the apple tree
  It was my favorite place to be
  I could hear them breaking free
  But they could not see me
• Speaking with the New Zealand Herald, Neil Finn explained: "It's also about your whole life and how you create your private domain. I don't know that it has a clear narrative but it has a deep sense of atmosphere. Songs are an alternative reality, or they should be."
• The song is part of the 1993 Crowded House album Together Alone, their last before the band split up in 1996. They regrouped 10 years later and put out their next album, Time On Earth, in 2007.
• The spacious effect heard on the guitar backing to the chorus used real space to create the airy sound. Mark Hart sat in the back yard of the beach house they used as a studio playing his guitar with the amp cranked right up. Mics were placed at either end of the surrounding bay (Kare Kare Beach) to record the resulting tones. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bren - Havelock North, New Zealand