“It was a very different song when we started playing it. It was probably ambitious as a first recording because it’s not a simple song — it’s got a lot of twists and turns. But the aim is to produce something that sounds effortless, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and that it’s always existed like that. That’s the art of record making.”

“Nick came up with those beautiful, melodic bass lines that weave in and out, doing a little musical dance with Liam’s liquid, electric guitar parts. We were aware that we had made something with great beauty and integrity. It felt like a definitive statement and that it should be the first track on the record.”

“The title “Magic Piano” comes from a children’s radio show… about a kid who hates practicing piano, and his piano starts to talk to him, and then he becomes able to play incredible things on his piano because the piano is sort of doing it all. And so some of the theme was sparked by that. But then, it is a genuinely a genuine love song to my piano. It’s also got other things to it, about music in general — just the effort to achieve lightness and elevation, and how magical that the whole thing is. I suppose I’m also stating my absolute devotion to melody as the lead — how it takes the lead part in my own relationship with music.”

“Melodies do reign. I wake up humming tunes just about every day. Some of them are really banal, like little jingles, and sometimes they lead me to the piano, and sometimes just sitting at the piano brings them forth. If I was able to write lyrics at the same rate, I’d be making ten albums a year, I reckon. I don’t mean to overstate the case - obviously, they’re not all brilliant melodies - but they are melodies and they go around my head all the time, and I often can’t sleep because of them. They’re slightly a curse as well. I do refer to that in the song: ‘These are the dark forces, making shadows dance on the stairway.’ That’s the downside of it - they kind of possess you sometimes. And also music can cross over to the dark side a little bit sometimes. There’s negative things it brings out in me that cross over into aspiration and ambition and being judged, status anxiety and all those things that come into music and whether you’ve got the magic on any given day. It’s just subtly referring to that in that song.”