As the acoustic tour made Grohl realize "we were making music worth listening to, rather than music made for pummelling the person next to you" he decided to give more importance to the lyrics and "have a connection with the crowd in front of us", considering that among the many compositions the band made on pre-production "the ones that stand out are the ones that say something". So for the first time the lyrics started being written before recording begun, with Grohl stating that he "sat in the back of the studio and just wrote every day for about 14 hours a day." Most of the lyrics of the album deal with themes of birth, death and life, which Grohl attributed to the birth of his daughter Violet, considering that having a child "changes your entire outlook on the world", and that he was suddenly more emotional - "So when you're writing music with that in mind or that in your heart, everything just blooms into this fucking incredibly colourful, colourful feeling." Helped by the extensive lyrical preparation, the lyrics also tried to show more of Grohl's feelings, "those things that you've always wanted to do or always wanted to say", with Hawkins adding that he could not listen to "Stranger Things Have Happened" as "I'm one of his best friends, and the last thing I want to do is read a love letter to his wife or whoever it is."