Keyboardist Nick Rhodes described the album's edgy sound in an interview with "Details" magazine: "It was a very angry record for Duran Duran, quite political. We've always reflected what's around us; it's just that we always tried to pick the more uplifting subjects. But there was so much doom and gloom and horror that it had got pretty deep under our skin. There's one track on there called 'Criminals in the Capital,' about our dueling leaders on both sides of the Atlantic... there was one song about a fighter pilot in the [Iraq] war. There's another song, one of my favourites on the record, actually, about the decay of the world and how we're all ignoring it – a song of desperation."