Songfacts®:

• "Hotel Room Song" is a reflective, melancholic song that captures the gritty realities of a musician's life on the road. Labi Siffre offers a candid look at the frustrations that come with trying to squeeze creativity out of yourself while hopping from one indistinguishable hotel room to another, an overworked celebrity longing for a spark of inspiration.
  
  "I wasn't comfortable with being recognized or whatever with the fame part," Siffre confessed to Mojo magazine. "I'd never thought about fame and fortune. It was never in my plan. It just never occurred to me, the business of, 'Oh, I want to be famous, and I want to have a Rolls-Royce.' And when I found myself in that situation, I just found it very uncomfortable."
  
  And therein lies the crux of "Hotel Room Song" - it's the sound of someone who never asked to be famous, and then suddenly found himself suffocating under the weight of it all.
• The song comes from Siffre's third album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying. His previous album, The Singer and the Song, had peaked at #47 on the UK album chart and he was by now an established-enough artist to be invited onto BBC programs to talk about his songwriting process. But for all the career success, there's a sense of creative struggle and self-doubt lurking just beneath the surface. Siffre sings:
  
  Last night, I thought, "I'll never ever write another song"
  Last night, I decided that all the songs I write were wrong
  Last night, there was nothing to write about, that's why I'm writing this song
  Last night, was a night to forget about, like you forget when I'm gone
  
  These lines capture the sheer banality of sitting in yet another bland hotel room, waiting for inspiration to strike and finding only the dull thud of the radiator and the persistent hum of neon lights outside.
• Siffre didn't just sing and write the album; he rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty with every aspect of the music on Crying Laughing Loving Lying. He produced the entire record himself, recorded at Chappell Studios in London, and played most of the instruments. The result? Siffre's most successful album to date, featuring two UK Top 20 singles: "It Must Be Love" (#14) and the title track, "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" (#11).