Songfacts®:

• The often-ambiguous Nick Cave makes no bones about "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)" being about his former girlfriend and collaborator, Anita Lane. He similarly makes no effort to hide the heartrending grief in his voice when he sings about his memories of her and her death in 2021 (her cause of death hasn't been officially released). All of his usual cryptic poetry tossed aside, this is deeply personal song of naked longing, love, and appreciation.
  
  "When she wasn't hating herself and hating the world, she was an incredibly beautiful, upbeat, optimistic kind of character – until she was not," Cave told Mojo magazine. "That song is about that part of Anita where the whole world is whistling and happy when she is around and sad when she's not."
• The song concludes with a recording of a phone conversation with Lane where she fondly recalls the fun and creativity they shared, including their songwriting process. In one moment, her laughter echoes through the song as she reminisces, saying, "Do you remember we used to really, really have fun?" Here's the full text:
  
  Do you remember we used to really, really have fun? We'd be just by ourselves, mucking around, really relaxed, not under pressure. I guess that's how we make up songs! I remember we were in bed and we imagined someone upstairs. I don't even know if we heard footsteps or imagined someone upstairs, then imagined the story. That was in that little place opposite Brixton Prison. I didn't even really realize that everyone wasn't like that. We tried to write a contract of love, but we only got as far as doing the border. There was never any words in it, which I thought said more than anything else.
• Carly Paradis, a Canadian-born British composer who wrote the theme tune for BBC's Line Of Duty, first joined the band on its 2022 tour playing keyboards. She contributed the whistling to "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)," telling Mojo:
  
  "I can whistle pretty good and I do bird calls. I'm from Canada, when I'm up north at my cottage, there's a certain bird I can call, a warbler, and it'll fly to me."
• "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)" stands out on Wild God as a personal, intimate moment among an album that largely delves into spirituality and transformation. Repeatedly, Cave exclaims "O wow! O wow! How wonderful she is!" - a celebration of Lane's memory and their shared experiences, offering a much lighter, more playful tone than some of the album's other, darker themes.
• Over the years, Nick Cave has penned many tracks about love in all its complexity. They include:
  
  1994 "I Let Love In" - "I Let Love In" is a cautionary tale about the complexity and pain of love. While it initially seems like Cave is welcoming love into his life, the lyrics reveal how love quickly transforms into a form of torment and entrapment.
  
  1997 "Into My Arms" - Often regarded as one of Cave's most iconic love songs, it features a tender piano melody and lyrics exploring love and faith. This song is deeply personal and has been linked to his relationship with Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro, with whom he had a son, Luke.
  
  1997 "West Country Girl" - "West Country Girl" is a song of romantic longing and idealization about a woman from the West Country, with imagery that seems to mirror qualities associated with PJ Harvey, whom he dated in the mid-1990s.
  
  2004 "Breathless" - An upbeat love song with nature imagery, this bright declaration of adoration, contrasts with Cave's typically darker themes.
  
  2013 "Wide Lovely Eyes" - Cave wrote this song after first setting his eyes on his wife Susie Bick at London's Natural History Museum. It's said that since then, all of his love songs have had her face.
  
  2019 "Waiting For You" - "Waiting for You" explores Cave's profound longing and devotion, following his tragic loss of his son, Arthur.
• Cave and Lane became romantically involved in 1977, the year they formed Cave's first serious band, The Birthday Party. Lane co-wrote "A Dead Song," which appeared on the group's debut album, Prayers on Fire, and several other of the band's tunes. She also co-wrote the title track to the first Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, From Her to Eternity, and contributed to "Stranger Than Kindness" on their fourth, Your Funeral... My Trial. She sings on the cover of Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not The End" that appears on the band's ninth studio album, Murder Ballads.
  
  In an article for Far Out, Cave called Lane "the smartest and most talented of all of us, by far," and "the brains behind The Birthday Party."
• Some fans expressed displeasure at the song's opening line, "She rises in advance of her panties." Cave addressed this in his Red Hand Files (issue 309), where he stated that he felt the line was so good that, after writing it, he took the rest of the day off. So, he wanted to defend it from criticism. He explained that the line references his early days in bed with her, driven by youthful lust ("I can confirm that God actually exists"), before quickly turning to a deeper appreciation of her playful nature when "she turns and smiles but never ever scantily." From that point on, the song is intentionally full of the "sweet, goofy naivety" that Lane inspired in him and many others.
  
  Lane's death isn't discussed until the final verse ("Her friends, now dead, their spectral chins all nod"), at which point she is watched over tenderly by friends who all appreciate what a beautiful soul she was.
• Cave's wife, Susie, sat with him through the writing of the song. She was also close with Lane. Again writing in the The Red Hand Files, Cave stated that the song was an honoring from from both him and Susie: "Susie understands that many of my lyrics are attempts to keep those who have passed away at the vanguard of our being, not just as vague and shadowy ghosts but as fully embodied incantations of our love. When The Bad Seeds play 'O Wow O Wow' live, I can see on the faces of the audience a communal conjuring of Anita's spirit - and through her, all our various departed, placing them at the forefront of our collective adulation."