Songfacts®:

• This is the title track of Paloma Faith's fourth studio album. The record features Paloma as Mother Nature, singing to humanity.
  
  Faith explained: "'The Architect' is a social observation record. I was adamant that I wouldn't write about love. I wanted to look outside of myself. I'm coming at politics from the perspective of the common man or woman, observing why people are suffering. Each song on the record is about a different pocket of the socio-political world that I've been delving into."
  
  She added: "I wanted to write something more modern. On previous albums I've been more concerned with the past, but now I'm looking forward because of motherhood and wanting to change things for a better future. It's a marriage of old and new."
• Asked by HMV.com when she decided the record was going to be called The Architect, Faith replied:
  
  "Well into my pregnancy. I'd written the song before I got pregnant. It was a heartbreak song, it was the world singing to humanity about how disappointed she was about how the world had ruined her. So as I literally grew and grew it just seemed more and more appropriate. The world singing to humanity is the key theme of the record, I felt an affinity with Mother Nature because I was making a person."
• The song was inspired by a conversation with Sir Tim Smit. The Dutch-born British businessman created the Eden Project, a visitor attraction in Cornwall, England containing a collection of plants from many diverse climates and environments.
  
  "I'd been to perform at the Eden Project and they gave me a tour," Faith explained to the BBC. "The guy who initiated it was talking me through how the ecosystem works, and he gave the example of bananas: how we all buy this one type of banana, but there are hundreds of types of bananas and we have set the world's ecosystem off kilter by growing one over the others."
• The song's lyrics are sung from the perspective of mother nature. Faith explained: "It says, 'If you stop hurting me, then I'll have some time to heal.' I just felt that it was important to write."
• The Architect topped the UK album chart with sales of 40,000 in its debut week, marking Paloma Faith's first record to reach the summit – Both Fall To Grace and A Perfect Contradiction having fallen just short peaking at #2. The first-week sales tally was also the best of the singer's career.
  
  Faith told OfficialCharts.com: "My intention for this album is to promote kindness, compassion, empathy and understanding. It's quite moving that it's all paid off."