Songfacts®:

• This is the lead single from Can't Go Back, the eighth studio album released by the British singer Tanita Tikaram. The LP was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann) in just six days, and this was the last song written for the record. Speaking with us in a 2012 interview, Tikaram recalled: "Before we went to LA, Paul Bryan said, 'Have you got any outstanding songs?' And I said, 'No, not at all.' And then Mark Creswell, who co-wrote the album with me, said, 'We have got one. We've got that road song about freedom. We're going to Los Angeles, don't you think we should just give them that song and finish it properly?'"
  
  Tikaram admitted that she was hesitant, "because it's kind of a freedom song," also she wasn't sure whether she could write that kind of a tune anyway. "But it was pretty much written," she continued. "I didn't know if it was a convincing song. But going back to it, it absolutely made sense on this album. And it probably carried a lot of the spirits of going to record in Los Angeles."
• Prolific is not a word that is associated with Tikaram. Can't Go Back was her first album in seven years, after 2005's Sentimental and one has to go back a further seven years to find the singer's album before that, The Cappuccino Songs. When we asked Tikaram if albums are like a seven-year itch for her, she replied. "I didn't even realize that gap between the albums. I actually didn't know Sentimental took seven years after Cappuccino Songs. It's not by design."
  The English songstress added that with Can't Go Back, the delay "was a lot to do with finding the right producer." She'd completed the songs a long time before but "there were a couple of false starts" and she had found the whole process of recording the songs confusing as "she wasn't entirely sure what was the best direction to take them." After meeting Paul Bryan, she "realized that he was the right person."