The Independent newspaper May 9, 2008 asked Tim Burgess which were his favorite lyrics of all the ones he had written. The Charlatans frontman replied: "I think I will choose 'The Misbegotten' from the Charlatans' new record, as I used a new technique that David Bowie and William S Burroughs brought to my attention. I used this technique a couple of times on our second and third albums but this time it came together really well, I think. I wrote four stories, cut up the lines and put them in a Beatles sandwich box I got from Japan, then picked out the lyrics and, as everything came out not everything flowed, and I used my intuition to write my story. One was the story of my childhood (that theme crops up a lot throughout the record), one was about Diane Arbus (a huge inspiration, always), one was a bad acid trip in a hotel and one was, I think, about getting sucker-punched by our old tour manager. The song has an underlying feeling of being betrayed."