The Lovers Are Losing

Pianist and chief songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley said to The Daily Mail October 17, 2008 concerning this power-ballad that resurrects hippy idealism: "I still believe in the romanticized goals of the '60s - peace and love. We now need those ideals more than ever."

This was one of the first songs that the band recorded at Teldex Studios, a massive former ballroom in Berlin. The German city had previously inspired Keane when they'd toured there and has produced such landmark albums as Bowie's Low and U2's Achtung Baby. Rice-Oxley told About.com how recording in Berlin helped develop the mood of Perfect Symmetry: "We recorded a lot of the record there, and that's a city that's been knocked down and divided up as much as any city on earth in the last 100-odd years, but it's constantly rebuilding itself and healing, and it's a very modern, forward-looking city, and it really embraces people and is a very creative city. It's a city that's full of hope and a sense of healing and looking forward. I think that's something we really absorbed in the spirit of making this record."

Rice-Oxley (from Perfect Symmetry's bonus DVD): "The Lovers Are Losing was a very, very important song for us in making the record – it was written in Berlin and so it, it kind of, I suppose was one of the peaks of creativity in Berlin, and it was, you know, shows the way that city inspired us when making the record. You often hear this very simple, boiled down version of what people are, divided into lovers and haters. You hear that in songs from everyone from Michael Jackson to Kanye West and I like the idea of being honest with ourselves, at this moment in time the lovers are definitely in real trouble. And I hope the song serves as a rallying call to all of us who aren't warmongers and all have a romantic dream of what we could be as a human race."