Into My Arms

Album: The Boatman's Call (1997)
Charted: 53
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Songfacts®:

  • Cave wrote this piano-based love song, cloaked in religious imagery, while in rehab. He explained to Mojo magazine March 2009: "In the first couple of days when you haven't slept, you're withdrawing from drugs, you're sick. You try and make the best of a bad situation."
  • Nick Cave performed this at the 1997 funeral of his friend Michael Hutchence. He requested that the TV cameras be shut off for his performance out of respect for the late INXS vocalist.
  • The Who singer Roger Daltrey covered the song for his 2018 solo album As Long As I Have You. Daltrey told The Sun:

    "I love Cave, one of the most amazing songwriters of today, and I like his version but I don't think he sang it as a singer. He keeps a dark side to the song which is great for Nick Cave but I heard something different in it."
  • The tortured love song has featured in several films including Zero Effect (1998), On the Beach (2000) Gettin' Square (2003) and About Time (2013).
  • In his 2022 book Faith, Hope and Carnage, Nick Cave explained that rehab patients were allowed to attend church on Sundays if they wished. One day, while walking back to the facility from church through the fields, the melody for "Into My Arms" came to him. Once he reached the facility, Cave sat down at the piano and composed the melody and chords. Later, he sat on his bed in the dormitory and wrote the lyrics.

    While penning "Into My Arms," he encountered a troubled drug addict covered in sores who was spraying himself with Lynx deodorant "as if that was going to change anything." When the addict asked Cave what he was doing, he said he was writing a song. The addict questioned why, to which Cave did not have an immediate answer.

Comments: 4

  • Andrea from Australia This is a really deep and meaningful song, the conflict of belief and non belief, trying to adjust to the path of peace.
  • Andrea from Australia I love this song so much; I have told my husband that if anything ever happens to me then that is the song I want playing at my funeral, although my husband hates it when I bring up this topic ( He finds it so morbid) I actually find "In to my arms" a really peaceful comforting song;
  • Andrea from Australia This song comes across as a great differing of opinions and beliefs; everyone has their own beliefs; but when one is struggling to know whether to have faith or not can be hard; especially when the other does have strong beliefs; We all need hope.
  • Roxanne from Brisbane, Australiaone of the saddest songs ive ever heard,perhaps because it rminds me of my best friend who died from a brain tumour....R.I.P.lynne xxx
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