Pianist and chief songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley told Keaneshine that this song was written pretty quickly. He added: "I remember going to a studio in Detroit to do the demo of that one and realizing I hadn't written a middle section for it. So I just bodged something together for the sake of the demo. When I listened to it the next day I thought it was the best bit, and still do!"

This features a segment of spoken French, which is an approximate translation of the song's first verse: "I wish that I could be/ In the cellars of the sea/And disappear in them/Never to be seen again."

Drummer Richard Hughes (from Perfect Symmetry's bonus DVD): "Black Burning Heart was one of the first songs that Tim wrote that made it onto the record, quite an early song for this album and its got this really cool, driving bass line which we just sort of got together while we were doing our early rehearsals for the record. And so I was always really excited about it – from a rhythm section point of view its really funky and quite different for Keane even though it just drives forward and has an amazing momentum as a song, its incredibly musical and as well as being a very cool song lyrically."