Songfacts®:

• In an interview with BBC DJ Steve Lamacq, frontman Richard Ashcroft explained this song: "The term Valium Skies has been in my mind for 10, 15 years. You get them all over the country but back home, up North, sometimes that grey, grey, grey cloud seems so low you can almost touch it and, but it was also a metaphor for depression and it's about being with someone who recognizes almost where you can go, how dark you can go but still is with you. He's in a band and he knew every time when you're breaking down, you know. 'When it comes to my Valium skies, she don't mind if I cry,' and I think that's a test of any relationship, I think, and really I was trying to get that across, I think. It's one of them songs that you first hear and then after a couple of listens it, the chorus had me for about a month after we recorded that. I was just, I couldn't get it out of my mind and it, yet it doesn't seem like an obvious single song or anything and again good playing by everyone, great guitars and good work."
• Bassist Simon Jones explained to Steve Lamacq how after Ashcroft came up with the framework of the song, the rest of the band completed it. He said: "Richard, you know, he's got so many songs, so many ideas, he'll come in one day and he'll do fifteen songs that he's been storing up and that was one that was, again going through the tape, someone said, 'Oh, that's a good song blah, blah, blah.' You'd take it home on a CD at the weekend, listen to it and then come up with your parts and, yeah, I think we overdubbed onto that one and kind of did the production thing, you know."