The song's lyric, by Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, describes the break-up between Albarn and Justine Frischmann, then the lead singer of Britpop band Elastica. Frischmann told British newspaper "The Observer" that she cried the first time she heard the song, then felt embarrassed and angered before she calmed down. The writers share the singing, with backing vocals by the London Community Gospel Choir. The line "Tender is the night", and the name of the song, refer to the novel "Tender Is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose title was in turn a quotation from Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale".