Songfacts®:

• "4 Winds" is the title track of the Liverpool pop-rock group The Lightning Seeds' sixth studio album. It was their first release for 10 years, during which main man Ian Broudie concentrated on production for other bands, such as The Coral and The Zutons.
• Broudie wrote this song after several close family members died in relatively quick succession, including his civil rights lawyer brother Robert, who threw himself from the bell tower of Liverpool Cathedral in October 2006. Broudie told The Daily Telegraph May 27, 2009: "I don't think I sat down and thought I'm gonna do a record about all of this, it was just about writing songs and getting that release. I was thinking about the idea of what's depression and what's sadness, and is there a difference? I wrote 'Four Winds' as a poem and then set it to music. I've never done that before."