THE WATER | The band spent an especially cold winter in Gothenburg, Sweden with producer Jonas Quant. They rented a disused radio station on the outskirts of town called Pellerin and lived and worked there for 4 months. The Swedish choir on ‘Stay’ were recorded there. The song ‘The Water’ was written at the end of the trip when the band were exhausted. Theo had to wear a coat and scarf whilst recording the vocals because it was so cold in the studio.

VERONA | The song ‘Verona’ is a hidden song on the CD version of the album. It was written as an ode to Verona in Italy where Theo and Adam went on holiday in the early days of the band. It was in Verona that they discovered Disco Lento, a relatively unknown genre of music from the early 90s, which went on to inspire some of their early work. The song features an elderly male community choir from Rochdale in the UK | https://youtu.be/EZsAVv-AKd4

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING AND SHARING YOUR EXPERIENCES OF HAPPINESS | #HURTSLISTENINGPARTY
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Beautiful to see everyone come together for the HAPPINESS #HurtsListeningParty on Telegram yesterday. Truly a global community of kind, creative and passionate people. Thanks for sharing all your memories. See you again next week for EXILE.

Here’s some faded footage from the archives by @laurenceellis 🖤 TH x

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EXILE LISTENING PARTY | SUNDAY 4PM BST #HURTSLISTENINGPARTY

1 HOUR #HURTSLISTENINGPARTY | FOLLOW THE LINK TO STREAM ON YOUR FAVOURITE PLATFORM | PRESS PLAY AT 4PM BST | https://hurts.ffm.to/Exile

5 MINUTES #HURTSLISTENINGPARTY | FOLLOW THE LINK TO STREAM ON YOUR FAVOURITE PLATFORM | PRESS PLAY AT 4PM BST | https://hurts.ffm.to/Exile

PRESS PLAY AND SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES ON THE GROUP CHAT |https://hurts.ffm.to/Exile

EXILE | Exile was the last song written for the album and was inspired by Giogio Moroder. It was one of the first Hurts songs Theo sang in falsetto.

MIRACLE | The song's chorus almost didn't exist. Right up until the end of writing the album, the song just went back to the guitar riff after each pre chorus. The snare sound in the song was made from kicking a plastic sheet with a steel capped military boot.

SANDMAN | The sound of the children singing in ‘Sandman’ isn’t actually children at all. It’s about 30 different takes of Theo singing, all sped up and warped to sound like children.

BLIND | Whilst filming the music video for ‘Blind’, Theo fell down some steps and needed 11 stitches in his eye. You can see the moment just before the fall at 2.26 in the video. This happened 2 hours into the video shoot, so Theo checked himself out of hospital in order to carry on with filming. The swollen eye you see in the final scene of the video is real.

The song ‘Blind’ was deemed too explicit for UK radio and so the band had to record a special version with the lyrics ‘cover my eyes and leave me blind’ in the chorus for BBC Radio 2. This version was only played on the radio and never released.

ONLY YOU | The opening lyrics of ‘Only You’ were inspired by a scene in the film Cocktail where Tom Cruise’s character Brian Flanagan says “Days get shorter and shorter, nights longer and longer, and before you know it, your life is just one long night with a few comatose daylight hours.”

THE ROAD | The album trailer video featuring ‘The Road’ was filmed in one take and required around 40 extras.