Robert Smith of The Cure talked with The Times:
“Our songs always had a fear of mortality,” he says. “I don’t feel my age at all but I’m aware of it and when you get older that fear becomes more real. Death becomes more everyday. When you are younger you romanticise death, but then it happens to your family and friends. I am a different person to the last record and I wanted to put that across. It can be trite. People could say, ‘Oh, we’re all going to die — surprise me!’ But I try to find some emotional connection to that idea.”