Better Strangers

Album: Royal Blood (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • This tale of a twisted romance was the last song that Royal Blood wrote for their eponymous debut album. Vocalist Mike Kerr told Drowned in Sound the story of the song: "That was our first experience of trying to write on the road, and we didn't get how bands did that," he said. "I was going up to my hotel room with my guitar and it wasn't the same, and then we would try things out in sound check."

    "After a while we'd built up these ideas, and I got the title from a Shakespeare line, from As You Like It: 'I do desire we may be better strangers' and I thought: 'What a brilliant insult!,'" he continued. "It really related to me, cos I'd been in a situation where I wanted to know someone a whole lot less, you know?"

    "It was the quickest I'd ever written lyrics, it just fell out of me and I think production wise and recording it, it's sonically the best song on the record," Kerr added. "It's probably my favourite song actually. There's always something about the last thing you do, when you know the clock is running out. We didn't even have a discussion about it; it was just like: 'This is the last song on the record.' It was just obvious."

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