“It’s a rather mathematical song that employs devices, so it’s kind of calculated in what it’s doing, but there’s a feeling in that chorus of “let go of your heart, let go of your head” that’s striving. I’m trying to express something but I don’t really know what it is, and as the years have gone by, in a way that’s the central theme of the record: this act of surrender. “Surrender at all costs,” if I may come up with a quote. I’ve come to reflect on that song and realize there’s something that resides in it that has a sort of confessional power, so I’m speaking to myself while addressing the listener. The person who is singing the song – the fictional character I’ve created who is going through their weekend on Friday, Saturday, Sunday – is also me addressing myself. Then more broadly it’s addressing anyone who is listening. What other way is there to live but to surrender? Do we really believe in reason? You’ve got to let go, there’s something much bigger. I’m always looking for slight ambiguities, so I wanted to frame this individual and his feelings in the modern Babylon: London. It’s a London record, the whole of White Ladder is, and that’s a London song. In the Victorian times, it was modern-day Babylon, and then you have Hollywood Babylon, you’ve got all kinds of things. The decadent world where man and his deceptions and advances and devices and vices have accelerated a world that is sort of a thing onto itself with its own laws. So, I was lost within that, and that’s why it’s almost like a parenthesis around the whole song – the song exists within this place. So, rather than saying “London,” I said “Babylon”.”David Gray (1282)