Songfacts®:

• This song is inspired by the singer Patti Smith, who also inspired the Eye To The Telescope album cover. Tunstall told The Mail On Sunday's You magazine: "The inspiration for the song was Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of her album Horses. I was staring at it one day thinking it was incredible. It's everything I love about music - mysterious, inviting, frightening."
• "Suddenly I See" plays in the opening credits of the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada. It was also used as the farewell music for female contestants eliminated from the reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Other TV uses include Gray's Anatomy and the debut of Ugly Betty.
• This song won Tunstall the 2006 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.
• "Suddenly I See" was one of the slowest chart climbers in history. It was on the American Hot 100 chart for 23 weeks before it entered the Top 40.
• Norwegian Spam wanted to use this song in one of their commercials. Tunstall - a vegetarian - was amused by the request but did not grant them permission to use the song. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Carrie - Burlington, CT
• Hilary Clinton used this as her presidential campaign music in 2008. Tunstall recalled to Q magazine March 2011: "She had a competition among her supporters to see what music they wanted, and they chose that. But it's dodgy being involved with these things, particularly at the beginning of someone's potential presidential career, because they can go and royally f--k it up, and you become the soundtrack. I'd prefer to be the song that's played when they leave office and they've been brilliant."
• Inspired by the Horses album cover, Tunstall desperately wanted to be an artist like Patti Smith.
  
  Suddenly I see
  This is what I wanna be
  Suddenly I see
  Why the hell it means so much to me
  
  "The chorus was me thinking, 'F---ing hell, that's what I want to be,'" Tunstall told The Guardian. "Not a famous pop star with lots of money, but like this woman who's living her life as an artist. I'd been trying for more than 10 years to be a professional musician. I was just exhausted from trying to persuade other people I was good enough."
• Speaking to ITV's Lorraine Kelly in a 2025 interview Tunstall joked that when she hears "Suddenly I See" in shops, she'll sometimes burst into spontaneous karaoke in the middle of the aisle.