Songfacts®:

• Gabriel wrote this 7-minute track about the difficulty he had communicating with his daughter. The song is an invitation, asking her to "unlock this misery" and come talk to him.
• The Us album alludes to the turmoil in Gabriel's private life at the time, and this song specifically addresses his younger daughter Melanie, with whom relations had become strained after he moved out of the family home into a nearby cottage with Rosanna Arquette.
  
  Mojo magazine asked Gabriel if the album helped communicate and heal or did it add fuel to the fire? "I don't know," he replied. "My ex-wife is now a very good therapist, and we joke sometimes that I gave her the fuel and incentive! I'm not conscious that the record was specific therapy that allows you to externalize what's going on inside and I always find that helpful."
• The opening track on the Us album, "Come Talk To Me" opens with the sound of bagpipes, which were played by a piper from England named Chris Ormston. Gabriel used bagpipe sounds on his 1980 track "Biko," but he made those with a synthesizer.
• Sinéad O'Connor is the female voice on this track. She also appears on the Us song "Blood Of Eden."
  
  O'Connor and Gabriel had a fling that inspired her 1994 song "Thank You For Hearing Me."
• Gabriel used this song to open his Secret World Live tour in 1993-1994. A very theatrical performer with a penchant for props, Gabriel would emerge from a phone booth and sing into a telephone, extending the cord as he tried to connect with Paula Cole, who did the female vocals on the tour.
  
  Two shows on the tour from Modena, Italy were compiled into a the video Secret World Live, released in 1994.
• Sugarland performed this song on their 2018 tour. The song was written before smartphones, but the duo felt the concept was more relevant than ever in an age when there are few barriers to communication, but little substance in the transmissions. In a Songfacts interview with Kristian Bush, he explained: "Jennifer and I are having an experience as parents, and an experience as adults and friends, where we're watching people spend more time communicating than I've ever seen people spend. Like, constantly going back to their phones. If they're not texting or typing, they're reading, they're absorbing. And it seems like there is so much communication, but no one is talking. And one of the things that we like to do as a band is remind you of the power of songs, because they have affected us."