Songfacts®:

• Cocker explained this ballad to The Independent May 9, 2009: "When you first start a band as a teenager, you can't help but think of yourself as terribly deep and that you will, in some profound way, bring about a change in the world through your own creativity. I certainly did. But the more time has gone on, the more I've realized that I'm not deep at all. I am, in fact, profoundly shallow. Oh well."
• A month before the release of Further Complications, the tabloids revealed that Cocker and his French fashion stylist wife, Camille Bidault Waddington, had split up. Cocker admitted to The London Times May 16, 2009, that he was concerned about how Camille would view both this song and "Leftovers." He added wryly that this song's title is "the phrase that I would like carved on my tombstone."