Songfacts®:

• Bassist Nicky Wire's lyrics for this song were originally about the Manic's original guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards, who disappeared on February 1, 1995. He told The Quietus: "I think this is as close to a love song to Richey as we're ever going to write. It's the oldest song on the album, I wrote the music and the words and I'd kept it hidden for about three years, because it's one of those topics you just feel a bit… but then you realise it's 20 years. We've done stuff like 'Cardiff Afterlife' and 'Nobody Loved You', but they were a bit more autobiographical - this is more, 'Fu--ing hell, it would be good if you were around, if you just turned up one day. Imagine how many festivals we could headline?' At which he would laugh. I just miss his pulverising intellect. It's not just us - I think the musical landscape misses him."
  
  "Then I lost a really good friend at Sony, our product manager for the last five years," Wire continued, "and he died really young, so I changed a couple of lyrics because it had an awful impact. It became this song about redemptive loss."
• Wire sings on this song rather than The Manic's regular vocalist, James Dean Bradfield. The bassist told The Quietus: "I think this is my best vocal, I put a lot of work into it. James said he thought this is the one my voice should be on, because it's got that sort of cracked frailty in the verses. I'm dreading playing it live - I don't like singing live."