Songfacts®:

• This is the first track on The Brightest Light, which reunited original Mission members Wayne Hussey, Simon Hinkler and Craig Adams for the first time since their 1990 album Carved in Sand. When they were writing the album, they drew on the blues as an influence, and this song is a collection of blues clichés Hussey was having some fun with. In the Hoodoo culture observed by many blues musicians in the 1900s, a black cat bone had special powers, ranging from invisibility to a Cupid-like ability to render a lady lovestruck. A few artists have recorded songs with that title, including Johnny Winter, Hop Wilson and Lightnin' Hopkins, and the phrase shows up in many old blues songs; one example is in "Hoochie Coochie Man," where Muddy Waters sings, "I got a black cat bone, I got a mojo too."
• This song talks about getting older, but Wayne Hussey told us that the references to aging don't reflect his state of mind. "I had a midlife crisis in my mid-30s and I'm well past that," he said in our interview. "There's no chance of me going out and buying a sports car. I don't really see it as a song about that. I see it as a bit of tongue-in-cheek, actually."