PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

I hope all my days
Will be lit by your face
I hope all the years
Will hold tight our promises

I don’t wanna be old and sleep alone
An empty house is not a home
I don’t wanna be old and feel afraid

I don’t wanna be old and sleep alone
An empty house is not a home
I don’t wanna be old and feel afraid

And if I need anything at all

I need a place
That’s hidden in the deep
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep
The modern world is broken

I need a place
Where I can make my bed
A lover’s lap where I can lay my head
Cos now the room is spinning
The day’s beginning

A PROPOS

« Atlantic was the first thing that we recorded for the record, and it was actually gonna be a b-side. It was weird – it was just a very very scrappy demo. To be honest, I don’t think any of us had really thought that it could be a really great song, or a great piece of music or anything; but Richard started playing this weird thing on the drums – we had some drums from the demo and he started playing out-of-time with them, sort of half a beat behind them. And it created this weird, incredible drum pattern which was funky and industrial, and it just brought the whole song to life and it immediately started to sound amazing. It’s a piece of music that I’m really really proud, and I think we’re all really really proud of as a band. It’s a great example of a piece of music that we’ve all contributed to, and it wouldn’t be the song that it is unless we all put something special into it. The reason it’s the first song on the record, is because it’s got such an incredible atmosphere to it, and I guess it’s about having a terror of being alone – it sets the mood of the record really well, both musically and lyrically. » Tim (from Beyond the Iron Sea – Podcast 2, May 22, 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

I always thought that I knew
I’d always have the right to
Be living in the kingdom of the good and true
And so on
But now I think I was wrong
And you were laughing along
And now I look a fool for thinking you were on, my side

Is it any wonder that I’m tired?
Is it any wonder that I feel uptight?
Is it any wonder I don’t know what’s right?

Sometimes
It’s hard to know where I stand
It’s hard to know where I am
Or maybe it’s a puzzle I don’t understand
Sometimes
I get the feeling that I’m
Stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in children’s rhyme, a soundbite

Is it any wonder that I’m tired?
Is it any wonder that I feel uptight?
Is it any wonder I don’t know what’s right
Oh these days?
After all the misery you made
Is it any wonder that I feel afraid?
Is it any wonder that I feel betrayed?

Nothing left beside this old cathedral
Just the sad lonely spires
How do you make it right?

Oh but you try
Is it any wonder that I’m tired?
Is it any wonder that I feel uptight?
Is it any wonder I don’t know what’s right?
Oh these days
After all the misery you made
Is it any wonder that I feel afraid?
Is it any wonder that I feel betrayed?

A PROPOS

Tim Rice-Oxley says of this song in Q Magazine October 2007: « It
articulates something that a lot of people have felt over the last few
years: being powerless and totally misrepresented. »

« It’s probably the one song on the record that most expresses our
dismay and confusion about what it means to be a British citizen, in
terms of what our society’s contributing to the world at large, »
Rice-Oxley explains. « It’s very hard to make sense of why Britain feels
it needs to sign up with George Bush’s attacks on Iraq and the whole
Afghanistan thing. It feels like there’s a whole lot of trouble brewing
up over Iran, and you just don’t know where it’s going to end. On a
personal level, for people of our age, it’s really unsettling. » – Tim – RollingStone.com Source

Is It Any Wonder? is probably the most ‘rock’ song that we’ve
done so far, I think. I remember doing a demo of it in Cologne on the
European tour, and desperately trying to finish it off in the studio and
write all the words, so I could do a demo of it. And Cologne cathedral
is a great structure that stands in the middle of the city: when the
British bombed Cologne during the war, the cathedral was pretty much the
only thing left unscathed in the centre of town, and I just thought it
was an amazingly powerful image. I love the idea of the cathedral
standing there, looking mournfully over the city.

The song generally is… I guess you could say it’s a very
political song. It’s just trying to make sense of the fact that Britain
could be attacking other countries on very devious grounds, when we’ve
always grown up thinking that you’re always a part of society that’s
essentially a power for good in the world. and I think a lot of people
of our generation have suddenly found it very unsettling to start to
feel that we’ve taken that for granted that we’ve always been
contributing to a society is a power for a good, and suddenly you
realise you realise that half the world really hates us(!) and on a
personal level that makes you start to doubt yourself a bit I think.

• The song is not an attempt at some sort of wide-sweeping political
  

  statement, it’s just about just seeing things from a personal level –
  what are you supposed to believe, what is actually right? How can you
  work out what is the truth, and what is the right thing to do? And
  there’s so many different opinions, and you’re supposed to have an
  opinion on what your country is doing, and yet it is so hard to even
  begin to gather all the facts. It’s really distressing thing for people
  of our generation I think, the feeling of not being able to do anything
  about that. I guess that was something we were all feeling very acutely
  in the song. And I think the sounds of the song sum that up in a very
  tangible way.

  I suppose once we’d hit upon the idea of using the piano through
  loads of vintage effects, and trying to make it sound as far from a
  piano as possible, we started to think in terms of what we wanted it to
  sound like on a particular song. If I was trying to find a particular
  sound, I’d want it to sound like something like from a Beatles song, or a
  Smiths song, or anything really! On Is It Any Wonder? we were thinking
  that a kinda Jimi Hendrix riff would be a great way to start a song that
  had so much bustling confusion and anger in it…so that was basically
  my attempt to rip off Jimi Hendrix! » – Tim – Podcast 2 (22nd May 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

A turning tide
Lovers at a great divide
Why d’you lie
When I know that you hurt inside?

And why’d you say
It’s just another day, nothing in my way
I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna stay
So there’s nothing left to say?
And why’d you lie
When you wanna die, when you hurt inside
Don’t know what you lie for anyway
Now there’s nothing left to say

A tell-tale sign
You don’t know where to draw the line

And why’d you say
It’s just another day, nothing in my way
I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna stay
So there’s nothing left to say
And why’d you lie
When you wanna die, when you hurt inside
Don’t know what you lie for anyway
Now there’s nothing left to say

Well for a lonely soul, you’re having such a nice time
For a lonely soul, you’re having such a nice time
For a lonely soul, it seems to me that you’re having such a nice time
You’re having such a nice time

For a lonely soul, you’re having such a nice time
For a lonely soul, you’re having such a nice time
For a lonely soul, it seems to me that you’re having such a nice time
You’re having such a nice time

A PROPOS

Lyrically Nothing In My Way is I guess about really being in denial – I hate it when people refuse to acknowledge their own feelings and reactions to something, because they see it as being a weakness to say that they’re scared, or upset about something, or whatever. The song’s actually written about some people I know who are married, and their marriage was essentially just bringing a lot of misery to both of them, but for some reason they just refused to acknowledge it. I hate the idea of people being so much in denial that they’re prepared to almost let their lives fall apart rather than acknowledge what’s going on. » – Tim – Podcast 1 (15th May 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah!
Ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah!

You must think I’m a fool
So prosaic and awkward and all
D’you think you’ve got me down?
D’you think I’ve never been out of this town?

Do I seem too eager to please to you now?
You don’t know me at all
I can’t turn it on, turn off like you now
I’m not like you now

Now that you’re here
I bet you’re wishing you could disappear
I’m trying to be kind
I get the feeling you’re just killing time

You look down on me
Don’t you look down on me now
You don’t know me at all
A slap in the face
In the face for you now
Just might do now

You’re leaving so soon
Never had a chance to bloom
But you were so quick
To change your tune
Don’t look back
If I’m a weight around your neck
Cos if you don’t need me
I don’t need you

Ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah!
Ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah!

Leaving so soon, soon
Leaving, leaving so, soon

You’re leaving so soon
Never had a chance to bloom
But you were so quick
To change your tune
Don’t look back
If I’m a weight around your neck
Cos if you don’t need me
Then I don’t need you

Ah, ah ah, ah ah, ah!

A PROPOS

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Why do I have to fly
Over every town up and down the line?
I’ll die in the clouds above
And you that I defend, I do not love

I wake up, it’s a bad dream
Noone on my side
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
To be fighting
Guess I’m not the fighting kind

Where will I meet my fate?
Baby I’m a man, I was born to hate
And when will I meet my end?
In a better time you could be my friend

I wake up, it’s a bad dream
Noone on my side
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
To be fighting
Guess I’m not the fighting kind
Wouldn’t mind it
If you were by my side
But you’re long gone
Yeah you’re long gone now

Where do we go?
I don’t even know
My strange old face
And I’m thinking about those days
And I’m thinking about those days

I wake up, it’s a bad dream
Noone on my side
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
To be fighting
Guess I’m not the fighting kind
Wouldn’t mind it
If you were by my side
But you’re long gone
Yeah you’re long gone now

A PROPOS

We wanted to get a balance between a kinda dream sequence – it starts very quietly, and I love the idea of being in a plane, like a Spitfire or something, being so high up in the sky that you can’t hear the guns below you and so on. And it’s almost got a serene silence which is what this Yeats poem seemed to really express. The song starts very quietly, but it gets huge and angry as it goes on – the big distorted washy piano sound in the middle is a pretty vast sound and it’s I guess an attempt to express all that anger bursting out. » – Tim – Podcast 3 (30th May 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

I don’t wanna be adored
don’t wanna be first in line
or make myself heard
I’d like to bring a little light
To shine a light on your life
To make you feel loved

no, don’t wanna be the only one you know
I wanna be the place you call home

I lay myself down
To make it so, but you don’t want to know
I give much more
Than I’d ever ask for

Will you see me in the end
Or is it just a waste of time
Trying to be your friend
Just shine, shine, shine
Shine a little light
Shine a light on my life
warm me up again

Fool, I wonder if you know yourself at all
You know that it could be so simple

I lay myself down
To make it so, but you don’t want to know
You take much more
Than I’d ever ask for

Say a word or two to brighten my day
Do you think that you could see your way

To lay yourself down
And make it so, but you don’t want to know
You take much more
Than I’d ever ask for

A PROPOS

Tim Rice-Oxley says this song is about his friendship with his bandmate, Keane singer Tom Chaplin. In Q
Magazine October 2007, Rice-Oxley explained: « With ‘Hamburg Song’ I started writing almost about myself. The first verse I’d written about my wife, about what she must feel about me sometimes. And then we got into the studio and it all poured out and turned into a song that was really about friendship. I did think, ‘This is going to be quite awkward.’ But if it’s painful to write or to play, then that’s kind of a job well done. »

• « Hamburg Song was written in America – I seem to remember writing it on a guitar in the back of the bus. But the first time we ever got together and did a demo of it, was in Hamburg on a tour last year [it was 2004].We had a really great day – it was the first time we’d done any work on any new songs and we had a day off so we went into a studio and just worked on some new demos, and Hamburg Song was one of them. It was just labelled on the tape box as « Hamburg Song » and we never got round to changing it. Somehow the name seemed to fit really well with the song.

  Lyrically I guess it’s about… again, it’s a bit like Atlantic, it’s about a fear of what we’ve got slipping away and I guess it’s a plea just to remember what a great thing it is to have a bond between people. And even if you all go off and you do different things and you make different friends and have all these adventures as people do – it’s just a plea that at the end of it all you’re still the backstop in someone’s life, as it were.

  When we demoed it up, we did it very very simply, and then started to play it live a little bit and we played it very very simply, and Tom’s just playing an organ on it. And there was definitely a temptation to turn it into this big ballad, and we just felt … we actually tried it; we thought we better try it, so we tried putting some drums on it, and that song is all about atmosphere – in fact the whole record, the most important thing was to capture an atmosphere. And we just felt that the best way to do that with Hamburg Song was the way that we’d done it to start off with, which was really really stripped back and simple, so we kept it that way. » – Tim – Podcast 3 (30th May 2006)

• « Hamburg Song is definitely about a particular feeling of… You don’t want someone’s attention all the time, you don’t want to be the star of the show all the time, but you just wanna be the kind of… what they consider to be their home. Even though you might only get a small proportion of their attention and time, they consider that small portion of time to be the most precious and the bit they look forward to the most. I guess it’s about feeling that you’re not really asking very much. » – Tim – Strangers DVD
• « It’s a complicated story. I actually started writing the song about my wife. It was during the height of the touring for ‘Hopes & Fears’ and I knew she was finding it difficult with me being away all the time and so many people other than her demanding my attention. She was always great about it, but I guess I was trying to say how grateful I was that all she
  asked was to be the person that I returned to each time all the chaos died down. I was trying to write it from her point of view, and that’s what the first verse is about. However, when it came to doing B-sides for ‘This Is The Last Time’, I suggested doing ‘Hamburg Song’ even though it wasn’t finished. That meant that I had to finish the lyrics very quickly in the studio, and when I sat down to write them, what came out was a kind of an outpouring of emotions about my friendship with Tom. I think it was the first time any of us had really articulated the negative effects that all the fame and touring was having on our friendships – I don’t think we’d even thought about it very much before that point.

  Anyway, I was really proud of the lyrics, and when Tom started singing them it was really electrifying and powerful. As soon as we heard it we knew we had to save it for the next album. » Tim, keanemusic.com

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Times goes by at such a pace
It’s funny how it’s easy to forget her face
You hide the cracks, the facts will find you
Turn your back and leave the lonely days behind you now

You better it put it behind you now
You better it put it behind you now
Too much to hold on, hold on to
You better it put it behind you now

All the things you took for granted
Hit you like a bullet in the gut
You can’t get up
Well are you gonna even try?
Cos if you never even try
Time will pass you by

You better it put it behind you now
You better it put it behind you now
Too much to hold on, hold on to (Hold on, hold on to)
You better it put it behind you now
You better it put it behind you now
Too much to hold on, to hold on to (Hold on, hold on to)
You better do what’s best for you

Don’t care what she said and (Better put it behind you now, better put it behind you now)
Only in your head (Hold on, hold on to)
Time will help you out (Better put it behind you now, you better put it behind you now)
Still you don’t see her (Hold on, hold on to)

You better it put it behind you now
You better it put it behind you now
Too much to hold on, to hold on to
You better do what’s best for you

A PROPOS

Lyrically, it was around that time Richard was going through a messy fall-out from a break-up with a girl that he’d been going out with for seven or eight years… so I guess it was a kinda friendly slap in the face or something! I think Tom and I were both feeling that he was getting really bogged down in this world of regret, and looking backwards all the time, and we just wanted to offer a way of picking him up and moving forward. » – Tim – Podcast 4 (5th June 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Instrumental, pas de paroles

A PROPOS

The track was composed in 2004 by Rice Oxley. On the UK version it is
the 8th track, but for the international version, « The Iron Sea » is
offered as a hidden song after « Put it Behind You. »

The song actually sounds like an « iron sea » with its fluid distortion rolling like glass waves on a metal ocean floor.

« I think The Iron Sea is the key track on the record – I guess because it doesn’t have any lyrics, it’s entirely about the atmosphere and the emotion that’s expressed by the music. It’s a very suffocating song, and it sounds very ominous. I find it really thrilling to listen to it, I really love it – it just sounds so oppressive and scary but in a slightly thrilling way(!), and that’s basically what we tried to achieve with the whole record. » – Tim – Podcast 4 (5th June 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Who is the man I see
Where I’m supposed to be?
I lost my heart, I buried it too deep
Under the iron sea

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall

Lines ever more unclear
I’m not sure I’m even here
The more I look the more I think that I’m
Starting to disappear

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Oh, crystal ball, hear my song
I’m fading out, everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong

I don’t where I am
And I don’t really care
I look myself in eye
There’s no one there
I fall upon the earth
I call upon the air
But all I get is the same old vacant stare

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Oh, crystal ball, hear my song
I’m fading out, everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong

A PROPOS

« Our touring schedule over the last couple of years meant that we were on the road all the time, and were never kinda stopping to really appreciate what was going and just spend time having fun – just the three of us functioning as friends and as people, like you normally do. And I think we all started to recede slightly into this little world where we weren’t really communicating or really expressing anything, and we weren’t really feeling anything. And it kind of came to a head when we were in America in June last year and I remember sitting on the bus, and I was trying to write a song and I realised that I didn’t have anything to say at all, and I didn’t have any feelings about anything – good feelings or bad feelings. That was a really scary for me, because I’ve always had lots to say, and lots of opinions whether right or wrong. We then ended up having a massive row about something a couple of days later and it came out of that that we were all feeling this sense of numbness, this feeling of kinda fading away as people. And I just tried to write about that, and it ended up becoming Crystal Ball.

It’s quite a chirpy song – it’s a weird one. I’ve always loved bands (The Smiths is an example that spring to mind), bands that can write a song that’s really energised and … ‘pop’ I guess, but is also really meaningful, but also really powerful and sad. And Morrissey is just the king of that, and I think the Pet Shop Boys were another band that did that really well – and those were two of the first bands I ever got into, so I think that’s still a big part of our music; and I guess Crystal Ball is probably the best example of that. » – Tim – Podcast 5 (12th June 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

I fell asleep on a late night train
I missed my stop and I went round again
Why would I want to see you now?
To fix it up, make it up somehow

Baby I’ll try again, try again
Baby I die every night, every time

What I was isn’t what I am
I’d change back but I don’t know if I can

Still I’ll try, try again, try again
Baby I die every night, every time

But I was made the way I am
I’m not a stone; I’m just a man
Lay down your arms and I will lay down mine
Rip back the time that we’ve been wasting

God I wish you could see me now
You’d pick me up and you’d sort me out

Still I’ll try, try again, try again
Baby I die every night, every time

A PROPOS

« Try Again – that was another song that I actually wrote at home rather than on the bus, when we had a break in touring and I just remember being really pleased with it, because I wrote it in one of those periods when I was convinced I was never going to write a decent song ever again – probably being very melodramatic about the whole thing. But you do get into those sorts of periods of writers block, and Try Again just came out quite easily. And I didn’t really know whether it was any good or not, but I played it to Tom and when we were in Stockholm last year we did a demo of it, and I remember sitting in the control room when Tom was singing it, and just getting absolutely goosebumps from hearing him sing it for the first time. It just transformed the song into this beautiful modern love song, and that was a real moment in the story of the album because it suddenly started to feel like things were coming together, and that we could still create music together in a really exciting way – so it’s one of my favourites just from a personal point of view.

Without me really wanting it to, it came out as a very modern … – I always think about it as being a commuter’s love song. There’s something weird about that feeling of being on a train really really late at night when there’s just a handful of you there, and I always wonder what everyone’s story is – especially people who’ve been to work and probably got up at some horrendous hour of the morning, and they’re traipsing back to their home somewhere in the suburbs. And it always seems to me, as if youth has started to be replaced by a dreary routine, and with that all the hopes and dreams of being a young person gradually, without even noticing, they start to ebb away; and a love that’s at the start of the marriage or whatever it is, just starts to disappear. And it seems like there’s something seriously fundamentally wrong with the way we conduct our lives in Britain definitely – it’s probably the same all over the world – and it always makes me really sad, and I guess the idea of the song is just as if… when it gets to the middle 8 of the song, it’s as if your eyes opened for a moment and you suddenly realise you’ve waited so much time and want to have one chance kinda grab it back and make up for all that lost time. It’s a really sad song, but it’s one of the few songs on the record that has a sort of glimmer of hope(!). » – Tim – Podcast 5 (12th June 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

I think you know
Because it’s old news
The people you love
Are hard to find
So I think if I
Were in your shoes
I would be kind

I look out for you
Come rain, come shine
What good does it do?
I guess I’m a toy that is broken
I guess we’re just older now

I want to stay
Another season
See summer upon
This sorry land
So don’t dust off your gun
Without a reason
You understand

I look out for you
Come rain, come shine
What good does it do?
I guess I’m a toy that is broken
I guess we’re just older now

Who says the river can’t leave its waters?
Who says you walk in a line?
Who says the city change its borders?
Who says you’re mine?

I look out for you
Come rain, come shine
What good does it do?
I guess I’m a record you’re tired of
I guess we’re just older now
I guess I’m a toy that is broken
I guess we’re just older now

A PROPOS

Broken Toy I really love, probably because it came together so quickly, and was really easy(!). But that’s definitely a song about … well, it’s particularly a song about the relationship between me and Tom. We’ve known each other our whole lives and we’ve always had a very ‘brotherly’ relationship, and that yields all sorts of great positive things, but it also occasionally tips over into sort of bad things because you know how to cut each other more deeply than anyone else does. It’s just a way of confronting that, I suppose – just the fact that our friendships were changing. I guess it’s a plea to try to cling onto that and not just let it slip away and not do anything about it until it’s too late. It’s a very explicit way of dealing with that, and I think it’s quite a good example of how the album was for us; when you can’t even talk about those things in normal everyday life, it’s quite hard to be singing about them in a song, but I guess it’s just our weird way of dealing with things(!).

Yeah – Tom’s singing a song that I’ve written about him. But I think the great thing about the way we make music is that anything that I write is almost reflected in what the other guys feel most of the time, and that’s why things work so well for us creatively. There are lots of songs that I write that the other guys just don’t get – they might mean a lot to me, but unless the song really touches a nerve with all three of us, we won’t do anything with it basically. But yeah, Broken Toy is a really intense one for us. It’s great to be able to sing about those things, and to play that music and feel that you’re somehow dealing with those things on a really primal level. » – Tim – Podcast 6 (19th June 2006)

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

An old fairytale told me
The simple heart will be prized again
A toad will be our king
And ugly ogres are heroes

Then you’ll shake
Your fist at the sky
« Oh why did I rely
On fashions and small fry? »

All promises broken
Feed your people or lose your throne
And forfeit your whole kingdom
I’d sooner lose it than still live in it alone

You were our golden child
But the gentle and the mild
Inherit the earth, while

Your prince’s crown
Cracks and falls down
Your castle hollow and cold
You’ve wandered so far
From the person you are
Let go brother, let go
Cos now we all know

Soon, someone will put a spell on you
Perfume, treasure, sorcery, every trick they know
You will lie in a deep sleep
That’s when

Your prince’s crown
Cracks and falls down
Your castle hollow and cold
You’ve wandered so far
From the person you are
Let go brother, let go
Cos now we all know

A PROPOS

• « It’s a reaction to a certain singer who seemed to make it his
  mission to slag us off at every point, but really didn’t seem to be
  being true to himself, or to have understood what we are. We don’t want
  to get into some tabloid slanging match, but we just felt like he was
  acting a part, and really pretending to be someone he is not. We really
  feel that you don’t have to be all glitzy and tabloid to make good
  music, and that there’s a bond between musicians and artists that should
  be held up – why not talk about a band you love or a song that inspired
  you? » – Richard – ilikemusic.com
• « Well another theme that runs through the record is the idea of a
  surreal and sinister kinda fairytale world gone wrong. And that runs
  through A Bad Dream, Crystal Ball, Broken Toy and the whole thing of The
  Iron Sea definitely has a slightly macabre unreal feel to it, and I
  think The Frog Prince is the most literal expression of that. Again, a
  bit like Leaving So Soon?, it was written on behalf of all three of us.
  It was inspired by a conversation that Tom and I were having in a
  slightly drunken state in a hotel in Toronto, and we were talking about
  someone in another band who we felt was a really talented songwriter and
  really intelligent and talented person, but we felt he was busy
  bad-mouthing us and every other band that was around it seemed. It was
  very frustrating to see him go from a cool great songwriter in a small
  indie band, to suddenly becoming this person who’s playing the part of
  the arrogant rock star. And I guess we in some stupid way felt that was
  some sort of betrayal, because you feel that you’re part of a community
  of bands and people who started at kind of at the same time. So that
  song was a defence of us, and it’s a plea not to betray who you actually
  are, in the hope of impressing other people. And I guess it’s using the
  idea of this sinister fairytale as a way of manifesting the weird world
  of the media and so on, and if you wander into it thinking you can say
  whatever you want then people encourage you to play a part. But they’ll
  just as soon stab you in the back, as give you a big hug and tell you
  how wonderful you are. It’s very dangerous game to play, and it ends up
  with you ceasing to be who you really are. And we’ve always, rather
  naively, tried to get by on being completely who we are, and being
  completely honest about who we are and being completely honest about who
  we are – and a lot of people really respect that, but on the other hand
  it leaves you exposed, you don’t have a shield up of any sort; so
  that’s what the song is about. » – Tim – Podcast 6 (19th June 2006)

• Is about Johnny Borrell (lead singer of Razorlight).

  « In fact, probably not even ‘The Frog Prince’ – the bitter
  spiralling finale to second album ‘Under The Iron Sea’, complete with
  the kind of Johnny Borrell-baiting lyrics Luke Pritchard would never
  have had the balls to write: ‘An old fairytale told me/ A toad will be
  our king.' » – NME Wednesday 16th August 2006 – message board

  « Will the identity of ‘The Frog Prince’ ever be revealed?
  It was correctly identified by an NME journalist in a piece about us a few weeks ago. » (Keane.fr – interview 200609) Source

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

The same, always the same
Bitter words are all that remain
Of the dream that had taken you in
But all her words were dust in the wind

It’s time to draw the line
To draw the fire
What you never know
The time to let go
The time to move aside
To let it slide

Say, what’s that you say?
Time to move on and you’re in the way
Lets get to the end and not turn around
She built you up so she could knock you down
It’s time to draw the line
To draw the fire
What you never know
The time to let go
The time to move aside
To let it slide
Friend, there’s nothing there
You’re clinging on to air
You’re reaching back
To something that you never had

It’s time to draw the line
To draw the fire
What you never know
The time to let go
The time to move aside
To let it slide
To let it slide
What you never know
The time to let go
The time to move aside
To let it slide

A PROPOS

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Time to leave this town
Now your dreams have all let you down
Noone here will miss you now
Time to wake up and look around

He used to be a lovely boy
Lovely boy
Lovely boy
He used to be a lovely boy

Turn away and turn ahead
« Just a hopeless dreamer », she said
Eyes of cloud and feet of lead
Find a shore that needs you instead

He used to be a lovely boy
Lovely boy
Lovely boy
He used to be a lovely boy
Time on your hands
World at your feet
No adventure left incomplete

Find a place where you can hide
From the love that holds you inside
Time so unkind
Like an old friend leaves you behind

He used to be a lovely boy
Lovely boy
Lovely boy
He used to be a lovely boy
Time on your hands

A PROPOS

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Now, will it ever be the same again?
And it will it ever feel right?
The false start, then I try to twist your heart
But I supposed it always knows

I know how I let you down
But maybe I can change this time around
This heart and these hands are mine
Maybe I can change this time

Soon, I’m gonna be an older man
And I will struggle to remember
The blank space when I tried to see your face
The blinded eye, I can’t replace

I know how I let you down
But maybe I can change this time around
This heart and these hands are mine
Maybe I can change this time

Oh why can’t we go back again?
Rain, rain, will you ever go away?
Come back again some other day

I know how I let you down
But maybe I can change this time around
This heart and these hands are mine
Maybe I can change this time

But I’ve tired you out with the things I do
But I can change, and change you too
But still somehow, I have to say
« I’m on my way »
Gone

A PROPOS

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

I can’t keep up
You’re moving too fast
Deep holes and darkness
These things will part

Dark times and strange places where
When I came to see you
You had nothing to say
I stood right beside you
You turned the other way
I reached out to hold you
And found nobody there
You turn into air

Trust me, I want you
Just as you are
Don’t change the things you do
Just stay as you are

Dark times and strange places where
When I came to see you
You had nothing to say
I stood right beside you
You turned the other way
I reached out to hold you
And found nobody there
You turn into air

Dark times and strange places where
When I came to see you
You had nothing to say
I stood right beside you
You turned the other way
I reached out to hold you
And found nobody there
You turn into air

A PROPOS

PAROLES

Rice-Oxley/Chaplin/Hughes

Instrumental, pas de paroles

A PROPOS