Songfacts®:

• Brian Molko of Placebo states: "It's a celebration of friendship with women, kind of immortalizing a couple of my friends. It's also about that time of the day when the sun's coming up and you're coming down;and everybody else is getting ready to go to work and you're feeling incredibly dislocated from the rest of the world; and all you really want is for a friend to be there to put their arms around you and help you ease into sleep." >>>

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• This is the lead single from Without You I'm Nothing, Placebo's follow-up to their self-titled debut album, which was a #5 hit in the UK thanks to its hit single "Nancy Boy."
• According to Molko, the band had a tough time making the album because of their dysfunctional relationship with producer Steve Osborne (U2's Pop). "And it wasn't as if we'd had any major arguments. We started off not talking much anyway, and then as the months went by, it became less until there was no talking. It was such a strange atmosphere," he told Vice in 2017.
  
  The turning point came when they brought in Phil Vinall, who had produced "Nancy Boy." Said Molko: "The breakthrough track was 'Pure Morning,' and we didn't record that until our work with Steve was done. We recorded that during a B-side session with a different producer, Phil Vinall. That was like we were kids in a candy shop. It was borne out of chaos, because the pressure was off. So we just started playing around with all of these different sounds and that song was the result."
• The band quit playing this live for about a decade because Molko didn't like the lyrics. He had a change of heart when he listened to it again prior to their 2017 tour and incorporated it back into their set list. "I was actually surprised at how timeless and modern that song actually sounds," he said.
• This was used in the movies Bad Company (1999), The Chumscrubber (2005), and My Name Is Juani (2006).
• The music video, directed by Nick Gordon, opens with Molko standing on the ledge of a building while onlookers and rescue personnel scramble below. His bandmates, Stefan Olsdal and Steve Hewitt, are arrested in the melee but everyone is shocked when Molko jumps and hovers midair instead of falling to his death.
  
  Molko explained the concept in a 1999 SUB interview: "The video started from our idea, and we wanted a very intense, desperate drama, which you might be feeling when you wake up to a pure morning. We wanted a video that can keep the viewers on the edge of their seats from the start to the end. And it also has a very important meaning that I don't die in the end. It shows some hope, I think. Actually some of us view this video from a different perspective, for example, do you remember the scene where Stef and Steve get arrested? We thought of ourselves as special beings with supernatural powers who came from a far future. That's why I could walk down on the building wall and people arrested Stef and Steve. People wanted to take us away and do experiments on us. That's why I was standing on top of the building away from the people. Or, the video could be about anything, really. It just raised some questions without suggesting any clear answers. You have to fill in the blanks. It can be interpreted in any way according to the person's experience and situation. That was our intentions. To raise questions without giving any clues."
• Molko on choosing this tune as the album's first single (Melody Maker, 1999): "For our second album, people expected an album full of 'Nancy Boy.' That's why 'Pure Morning' was such a good single to comeback with. It was more interested in technology and keyboard and samplers and using the studio as a reactive tool, instead of the rehearsal room. 'Pure Morning' was done in a day, around a guitar riff we sampled and put a track over. That's an aspect we find very exciting, learning how to use machines more."
• The video concept was inspired by the 1951 movie Fourteen Hours, starring Richard Basehart as a distraught man who threatens to jump off the ledge of a high-rise building.