Sky Blue and Black

Browne's relationship with actress Daryl Hannah came to an end about a year before this song was released, and she's clearly an inspiration on the lyric, which covers a range of emotions, including severe longing: You're the hidden cost and the thing that's lost In everything I do Yeah and I'll never stop looking for you In the sunlight and the shadows Browne wrote the song over a period of four years and in "lots of different states of the relationship."

"I was trying to write something in the vein of Van Morrison's cascading cadences and images," Browne told Mojo in 1997. "I wrote the first part and tried to answer the questions it raised later on. It wasn't until I knew more about what was going on in my life that I completed it."

The I'm Alive album was a very personal one for Browne, in stark contrast to his previous studio album, World In Motion, released four years earlier. That album dealt with politics and world events - topics he put aside for I'm Alive, which deals with interpersonal relationships.