Songfacts®:

• This is a track from the British alternative rock band White Lies' sophomore album, Ritual. Frontman Harry McVeigh told the NME the album title fits in with a theme running throughout the record. "It's about love with a bit of religion in there as well – a lot of religious imagery," he explained. "Things like that, they're all rituals. Things you associate with your day-to-day life, but they're also habits.
  It's kind of something that can mean everything and nothing. It can be the most important thing in the world… religion, love… it can also mean you have the ritual of going home to work every day and watching TV for two hours. A ritual is anything, really."
• The love theme of Ritual is a major change of emphasis from White Lies' first album, which majored on death. McVeigh concurred, telling the NME: "Yeah, especially a song like 'Strangers.' It's a very balls on the table love song. When we made the record we were in a really good place. We found it so comfortable writing again after so long on the road."
• Bassist and lyricist Charles Cave explained the theme that runs through Ritual to NME: "The point of the record in a way is putting something like love on the same plane as religion and ambition. It's just a distraction, something to hope for, something to, when you have it, work harder on. To kind of keep you busy, basically. That's where it's changed. Before I saw something like love or religion or emotion as being very dramatic, almost sort of mystical, in a way. And now I see it as very tiring. These things are very tiring and… chemical. It is completely chemical. I regard emotions as 100 per cent scientific. You can look at it under a microscope."