Is It Any Wonder? - "It's probably the one song on the record that most
expresses our dismay and confusion about what it means to be a British citizen,
in terms of what our society's contributing to the world at large," Rice-Oxley
explains. "It's very hard to make sense of why Britain feels it needs to sign
up with George Bush's attacks on Iraq and the whole Afghanistan thing. It feels
like there's a whole lot of trouble brewing up over Iran, and you just don't
know where it's going to end. On a personal level, for people of our age, it's
really unsettling." - Tim - RollingStone.com Source

Is It Any Wonder? is probably the most 'rock' song that we've done so far, I
think. I remember doing a demo of it in Cologne on the European tour, and
desperately trying to finish it off in the studio and write all the words, so I
could do a demo of it. And Cologne cathedral is a great structure that stands
in the middle of the city: when the British bombed Cologne during the war, the
cathedral was pretty much the only thing left unscathed in the centre of town,
and I just thought it was an amazingly powerful image. I love the idea of the
cathedral standing there, looking mournfully over the city.

The song generally is... I guess you could say it's a very political song. It's
just trying to make sense of the fact that Britain could be attacking other
countries on very devious grounds, when we've always grown up thinking that
you're always a part of society that's essentially a power for good in the
world. and I think a lot of people of our generation have suddenly found it
very unsettling to start to feel that we've taken that for granted that we've
always been contributing to a society is a power for a good, and suddenly you
realise you realise that half the world really hates us(!) and on a personal
level that makes you start to doubt yourself a bit I think

The song is not an attempt at some sort of wide-sweeping political statement,
it's just about just seeing things from a personal level - what are you
supposed to believe, what is actually right? How can you work out what is the
truth, and what is the right thing to do? And there's so many different
opinions, and you're supposed to have an opinion on what your country is doing,
and yet it is so hard to even begin to gather all the facts. It's really
distressing thing for people of our generation I think, the feeling of not
being able to do anything about that. I guess that was something we were all
feeling very acutely in the song. And I think the sounds of the song sum that
up in a very tangible way

I suppose once we'd hit upon the idea of using the piano through loads of
vintage effects, and trying to make it sound as far from a piano as possible,
we started to think in terms of what we wanted it to sound like on a particular
song. If I was trying to find a particular sound, I'd want it to sound like
something like from a Beatles song, or a Smiths song, or anything really! On Is
It Any Wonder? we were thinking that a kinda Jimi Hendrix riff would be a great
way to start a song that had so much bustling confusion and anger in it...so
that was basically my attempt to rip off Jimi Hendrix!" - Tim - Podcast 2 (22nd
May 2006)