“The song is about the cycle of relationships but it’s about obsession and that kind of feeling you first get when you’re with someone, when you’re almost wracked in pain, that falling to the floor, dropping to the floor, that almost religious feeling that you have when you first fall in love.”Brett Anderson (425)

“I’m thinking quite apocalyptically at the moment. I’ve been writing a song about everything going mad at the moment. Do you get that sense? There’s so much instability in this country – race riots, everything’s falling apart. Apart from people in the band and the music business, every single friend I’ve got is on the dole. It’s ridiculous. So I’m thinking terrible things. It’s the way I used to feel when I was 13 or 14, actually. In the early ’80s it was very much like this. When the Russians went into Afghanistan, there was real tension going on, and all the newspapers had articles explaining who would be maimed, and who would be immediately burned. It was frightening, being that age. Then there was this massive insecurity, this enormous threatening thing, but now I’m less afraid of death, more concerned with the hellish consequences of something like a nuclear war. We were flying to Las Vegas on our American tour: the night before I’d had a dream about this character called Little Boy. I didn’t know who it was, I thought it was a character from a book. I asked Mat about it, and he told me that Little Boy was the name of the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima. We were flying over the Nevada desert where they did all the nuclear testing. I turned and looked out of the window and, no joke, there was a mushroom cloud there. It was actually caused by a big fire that was going on in the desert, and these things happened in the same day. It was one of the most frightening things in my life.”Brett Anderson (860)

“It’s about a sense of unrest I feel about the world. An attempt to make some sense when everything seems to be going slightly insane. I do get a real sense of impending doom, but not in a depressing way, not like we’re all gonna die, let’s go and rape people. I feel quite content with it. We’re living under some shadow, and I’m not quite sure what it is. It’s a bit like the fears I felt when I was growing up, when things were unstable and there was the threat of nuclear war, or the fear that your parents could die of aerosol poisoning.”Brett Anderson (861)

“That’s about pure mundanity, being off your face every night and your staple diet coming from your bathroom cabinet. It’s a metaphor for a humdrum life, going up and down the London underground, which I spent five years of my life doing.”Brett Anderson (861)

“I don’t have a banner that I uphold for any sexual faction. I just don’t feel like I’m a fully fledged member of the male sex. But I think lots of men feel like that. Which doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay or even bisexual, just that there’s a lot more to sexuality than you’re fed. That’s very much how I feel [a feverish desire to be ravished, engulfed, devoured – Ed]. I’m quite interested in lying back and taking it. And that’s traditionally a female thing, isn’t it? It’s about emotional submission as well. Relinquishing control isn’t considered very manly. ‘The Drowners’ is about being drunk through love, being so consumed it’s almost like you’re smacked out on heroin.”Brett Anderson (862)

“[Referring to the line: ‘I have the look of a son/With all the love and poison of London’ – Ed]. Part of the enjoyment is the pain, isn’t it? Like a drug addiction, you don’t enjoy the drug until you’re addicted, that’s the dichotomy, and it’s the same with London. There’s so much depression and yet so much warmth as well. On the bad side, there’s a strength and a romanticism which I draw from.”Brett Anderson (860)

“My songs tend to come from my experiences, and the experiences of people who are close to me. The songs that specifically revolve around the gay world, like ‘Animal Nitrate’, are written because I’m involved in it through my friends – about 50 per cent of whom are gay: they are love songs for their feelings. When people say that I’m just using gay imagery, it depresses me, because my friends go through emotional turmoil. I’ve felt that on their behalf, and written songs for them. The idea of gay love songs being tender seems alien to most people. I want to redress that.”Brett Anderson (860)