Nick Wise views the whole album in terms of Butler and Anderson constantly trying to outperform each other, thereby producing "a pot-pourri of swirling guitars, falsetto wails and surging amplification that somehow succeeds in producing a giddy, weird, beautiful soundclash". In Suede's early days when Justine Frischmann was still a member and was dating Blur's Damon Albarn, the lyrics of her ex-partner Anderson were conveying a more depressing meaning. He has noted that the songs "Pantomime Horse" and B-side "He's Dead" were the product of an unhappy mind and that he could not have written such songs if he had been happy. Anderson states, "when it comes to writing, there's something to be said about being unhappy. I know I've been at my most creative when I've been sexually unsatisfied."