Songfacts®:

• As with multiple songs on Wild God, Nick Cave and Bad Seeds' 18th studio album, "Long Dark Night" is about faith, doubt, and finding God. Cave was inspired to write it after reading a poem titled "Dark Night of the Soul."
  
  The poem was written sometime within 1577–1579 by a Spanish Catholic mystic who changed his name from Juan de Yepes y Álvarez to St. John on the Cross. He's regarded as one of the most important poets in Spanish history. His poem worked its way into common English usage, as the term "dark night of the soul" is widely used to denote crises of faith and trying times in life. Most who use the term have no idea where it came from.
  
  In "Long Dark Night," Cave discusses his own trying experience on the road of faith. He mentions a wild-haired man that comes to him ("But a flying man with long trailing hair") - the same wild-haired man from the album's title track ("so he flew out the window with his long trailing hair"). Cave called "Long Dark Night" a "sweet companion" to that title track.
• Talking to ABC News, Cave revealed that his perspective on life changed after two of his four sons died. He'd been an obsessive worker who thought that his art was the most important thing in the world, but his sons' deaths made him see his old habits as shallow and selfish. He now fully embraces his roles and responsibilities as father, husband, and citizen, and he no longer thinks the world should stop turning so that he can write songs.
• This was the third single released off Wild God, following the title track and Frogs.