"These are thirteen perfect melodies, untainted by presentation, so pure they hurt. So utterly correct you'll find yourself waking up humming them every damn morning for weeks"

Meanings according to Kelly Jones as featured in Melody Maker: 20 February 1999

"This is based on a night in a New York club called Shine where we played. The manager gave us a booth. Then this guy called Dominique came on stage talking about peoples fears, the openness of sex and religion, and the final act was meant to be a woman who comes on with a pig's head and pisses all over herself, but it was cancelled. And we were going, 'What the F***ing hell is going on!' At the end of the night, this guy gave us his business card and it said ' Shine - Performance and Cocktails'. People might take this song literally -us on the road drinking- but there's more to it than that."

"This is a chain of thought song. It's based on all sorts of things: waiting for a traffic light to turn green, a kettle to boil, losing your virginity, getting married, having children. Everybody has an expectation about what the perfect life is: the big house, winning the lottery. You always wait for something better to come along because you're never satisfied with what you've got. Sometimes you wonder whether this is all it's going to be. The title comes from a phrase my brother used to say on the tour bus."

"This came from a trip to America with Richard, when Stuart had gladular fever. It's about going to America and not being remotely shocked. I thought I was going to be really impressed, but I'd already seen it all on TV. Even the empire state building didn't feel that big. I had to find some part I hadn't seen before when all I saw were rows and rows of people drinking alone"

"It's based on the media trying to find something that's not there. It was inspired by the treatment of Michael Hutchence, Princess Di and Ron Davies."

"I dreamt this song. That's never happened before! Normally I wake up and think 'Ah, it's just a pile of shit', but I recorded this one just in case."

"We played this at Earl's Court with The Who [in 1996]. It was originally called 'The Pool'. I based this on a story I heard about a man who is obsessed with this singer. He goes into the record company demanding to see her and, because they won't let him in, he ends up shooting the receptionist. I tried to make him really child like, he just wants to show off his T-shirt suntan. It took me back to when I was a kid playing at a pool opposite to my house. All the kids liked to show off their little whit bodies with brown arms. It's a good image."

"When we went to Hamburg we saw all these prostitutes in the windows. The easy way of looking at it was five boys, walking down the street, getting drunk and having a laugh. But I decided to turn it around and write what she was thinking: what does she dream for? I was down the club in Cwmaman and this little kid came up to the guy I was talking to and said 'is yesterday tomorrow today?' It means everyday is the same, even in all these different places."

"This was the first one I wrote in my new house, before we went on tour last January. It's about if there's a shit time happening, you stay with your memories a little bit longer, rather than coming back to reality. If something is a pain in the arse, you think back to something better."

About an older woman who used to have the attention of all the young men but now she is older the only way she can get their attention is by stripping.

California is a f***ed up place and the song is about not being able to decide if you like it or not.

It's a story so just listen to the lyrics.