Private Hell

Paul Weller told Mojo about this portrait of a middle-aged woman glumly floating through life on Valium. "I took what I thought I saw and exaggerated it and built on that," he said. "She seemed a very beaten-down, unhappy person really. Perhaps she wasn't but that's the vibe I got." "I had to get two more songs to finish off Setting Sons, so I remember sitting in an office with just a tape recorder and a chair and a guitar," Weller continued. "It felt a bit like the Brill Building. So I wrote 'Private Hell,' then I wrote 'The Girl On The Phone,' the same day as well. But we were still f--king short. That's why we put (Martha And The Vandellas') 'Heat Wave' on that album."

This brash character study of a mother in her "private hell" is one its creator would never pen four decades on. Weller told Uncut in 2022, "I wouldn't write a song as harsh is that now. It's not like I didn't feel empathy for [the mother] in that song, but I'd just use softer language, different words."