Songfacts®:

• Wainwright described this song to Spinner as "the most visceral song" on Out of the Game, which was produced by Mark Ronson. He explained: "There's a kind of intensity and focus that reminds me of certain Elton John or Fleetwood Mac songs, these uptempo numbers that are at the same time incredibly emotional and war-like, which is exciting but also a little scary. It's a very private song, about a person being a city, and that city being Jericho. It's a biblical mystery."
• Situated well below sea level 10 miles north of the Dead Sea, the Palestinian city of Jericho is the lowest permanently inhabited site on earth. It also lays claim to being one of the oldest cities in the world. Described in the Old Testament as the "City of Palm Trees", abundant springs in and around Jericho have made it an attractive site for human habitation since around 9500BC. By about 8000 BC it had grown into a town of 2,000 people. It was subsequently established and abandoned many times including being completed destroyed by the children of Israel, led by Joshua in around 1400BC. (You might recall the story recounted in the Old Testament book of Joshua of how Jericho was captured after its city walls collapsed.) Today, it is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of over 20,000.