Songfacts®:

• This song is about longing for the partner you have hurt to come back and forgive you. But the singer also wants this person to be bisexual like he is ("change your style again"). Reason for wanting this person back: "It's been this way since Christmas day, dazzled doused in gin." Placebo lead singer Brian Molko is bisexual. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Shaun - Adelaide, Australia
• In a 2000 interview, Molko explained the song's meaning: "I guess it's quite a sonically complicated song, but lyrically it's very simple - being the classic old story of love lost. The person in the song is suffering from this obsessional pining and feeling of torment that follows you from the moment you wake up to the very moment you go to sleep. It's ever present, it's right in your face and affects your ability to function or do anything properly. It's a kind of pain that absorbs every aspect of your personality and every molecule in your body and the person is so desperate that they are willing to do anything possible, or change themselves in any way to win this person back, which is obviously a very unhealthy state of mind and being, emotionally. Sonically I think the sound reflects the pain."
• Molko told LA Weekly the pain and desperation of a breakup "needed to be reflected in the sonics of the song, so we tried to make it as hard as the Broken EP by Nine Inch Nails, blisteringly nasty." The band felt particularly inspired by the track "Wish."
• While he does relate to the song's theme, Molko is singing from the perspective of a character rather than himself, which is what he prefers. He explained in a 2000 Melody Maker interview: "Well, my lyrics are definitely getting less and less autobiographical, less like a diary and more like stories. But at the same time, I identify with all of the characters within the stories. It's just that the narrator's voice isn't always mine. I try to make the characters sympathetic and put in as much of me as possible in order to make them personal. I'm interested more in writing stories now about strange people with intense emotions."
• At #16 UK, this was the highest-charting single from Black Market Music, Placebo's third studio album. The album itself peaked at #6 on the UK Albums chart.
• Black Market Music was meant to be a testament against the rap-rock bands that were taking over radio with songs laden with misogyny and homophobia. Molko told Vice in 2017: "Yeah, it was sort of Limp Bizkit's height of popularity, so we tried to mix hip-hop into our sound and try to make it a Sonic Youth crossed with KRS-One kind of vibe, as opposed to this really aggressive, macho bullshit that was popular at the time. So I'm sure that influenced our decision to make a foray into alternative hip-hop. I'm not sure how successful it was, but at least, I suppose, we had the balls to do it. It was interesting and fun to do."
• The Barbara McDonogh-directed video finds Brian Molko involved in a love triangle where he romances both halves of a bickering couple. Meanwhile, a woman draws tarot cards that predict the unfolding scenario. The clip was filmed at the Central London Register office. According to Placebo bassist Stefan Olsdal, the room he and Steve Hewitt are sitting in was where John Lennon and Yoko Ono tied the knot in 1969.
• The band tapped McDonogh to film their video after seeing that she used their song "Nancy Boy" in an MTV ad.
• The album was produced by Paul Corkett, a British producer and engineer who also helmed The Cure's Bloodflowers that same year. Corkett was also the engineer on Placebo's previous album, Without You I'm Nothing.