Songfacts®:

• This was inspired by the Shoemaker-Levy comet. When the comet was discovered in 1993, it had already brushed Jupiter and was broken into pieces that were caught in the planet's gravity. In July 1994, the pieces of the comet crashed into Jupiter, providing some impressive images. It was a rare and spectacular event that got a lot of attention from anyone interested in astronomy.
• In the song, the comet is used as a metaphor for an encounter with a woman. She shows up suddenly, leaves an impact, then disappears.
• In a 1996 interview with MTV Europe, vocalist and lyricist Robert Smith discussed the meaning of the track as "About the comet crash a couple of years ago. As an analogy for a failed sexual encounter. And how you kind of build people up. Everyone expected the comet kind of hit Jupiter and Jupiter was gonna explode. Unless you have a pretty powerful telescope, you couldn't see anything at all. That sort of sense, there's a big build up and the next day, people were saying 'That was rubbish.' It wasn't rubbish, it was incredible. It wasn't what you expected. That was the analogy."