"Riches to Rags" originates from a
riff composed by
John Levén. He sent the riff to
Joey Tempest and the latter finished the song in a music rehearsal space he rented in Shepherd's Bush, by adding a chorus of his own and writing lyrics are about forgetting the past, moving on and re-emerging. Tempest explained: "We’re not doing that anymore, this is what we are. We are expressing ourselves exactly the way we want. This is it. We’ve moved on, we’ve crossed the line and we’ve lost our minds, this is it, take it or leave it, like it or not”, you know, that's the attitude of the song. So that's ‘Riches To Rags'". "Requiem" is an instrumental track composed by
Mic Michaeli. Michaeli placed this piece of music while the band was recording in the studio and Shirley thought it would be a good idea to record the piece as an intro. Originally, the band had titled the track "Requiem for the 80's" and planned to use it as the intro to "Riches to Rags", but in the end they decided to use it as the intro to "My Woman, My Friend" instead. "Not Supposed to Sing the Blues" was recorded in just one take. It was written as a tribute to the Sixties and all the musician who came from small places and turned the whole world upside down. It features references to Tempest's birth year,
Jimmy Page,
Malcolm Young,
Angus Young and
Elvis Presley. Like "Riches to Rags," it was written by Tempest in the music rehearsal space in Shepherds Bush. "Firebox" was written late during the writing process for the album. It originated from a riff composed by Michaeli. He sent the riff to Tempest, who composed the verse, chorus and solo parts and wrote lyrics later on. Michaeli plays keyboards on this song, using samples from a real
sitar. "Bag of Bones" is another song Tempest wrote in the music rehearsal space he rented in Shepherd's Bush. He wrote it on his
Fender Stratocaster guitar connected to a rented
Marshall amplifier. He originally came up with a
nursery rhyme structure in the beginning of the song and built it from there. The lyrics are about Tempest's exhaustion, which he felt after two and a half-year of touring, and also about the
2011 England riots which started in London. Those riots are referred to in the line "My city lies in ruins". The song also features
Joe Bonamassa on
slide guitar. "My Woman My Friend" originates from a bass guitar riff composed by Léven. He sent the riff to Tempest, who originally had no idea on what to do with it. Then he decided to combine the riff with an old piece of music from his archives which included a chorus and little
bridge. He later wrote lyrics for it, most of which were drafted during the recording sessions. The song is about spiritual love and trials and tribulations of relationships and staying together with the same person for a long time. The song also mentions how wonderful spiritual love can be, how miraculous it can be and how disastrous it can be. On the album, Levén's riff is being played in the intro and the
outro of the song by Michaeli on piano. "Demon Head" is a
Deep Purple-influenced song. "Doghouse" is the first song written for the album. "Drink And a Smile" is the last song written for the album, after most of it was finished. Tempest came up with a melody, Michaeli played
mandolin and they came up with a
stomp progression. Later, the rest of the band joined in. "Mercy You, Mercy Me" originates from a riff composed by
John Norum. He played this riff to Tempest at a rehearsal and Tempest liked it. Shirley also said it would be a great idea to build the song around that riff, but at the time the band did not have a chorus for the song, so Shirley went outside for a fifteen-minute walk. By the time he came back, Tempest and Norum had composed wrote a chorus for the song and Shirley came up with a lyric: "I heard you sing something like 'rise up'" and suggested them to use that one, but Tempest had no time to finish it. He wrote lyrics later in the rehearsal space in Shepherds Bush, which were inspired by walking on the London streets and thinking about the reasons why people are either fortunate or sad. "Bring It All Home" originates from a jam session between Tempest and Michaeli in San Francisco in 1990;
New Love in Town also originated from the same session. Tempest got the inspiration for the lyrics while watching the film
The Last Waltz (1978), the idea for this song being it would be the last song on the setlist that would be performed on the last Europe show. Lyrically, it is about saying "Thank You" to all the fans and people that supported them over their career. ==Release history==