"News at Ten", a cynical examination of the generation gap and the narrator's fear of ending up as complacent as the parent he despises for his conformism, was expected to be a hit on the back of the success of "Turning Japanese".

Its poorer performance was blamed in part by the long-running strike at the BBC's Top of the Pops, which meant it received very little media exposure.

Its ambiguous lyrics have been interpreted as concerning the short ceasefires agreed upon between armies during wars to allow each to attend to their wounded in the no man's land between them.

[citation needed] The song was the inspiration for the long-running "Sixty Second Interview" feature of the UK's free Metro newspaper given away at public transport stations.

[citation needed] "Letter from Hiro", the album's lengthy finale, concerns the sense of powerlessness a boy feels as events push towards World War II, and towards the inevitable ending of his friendship with his more patriotic Japanese pen pal ("And when the sun was rising somewhere in the East, and when a flag meant more to Hiro than to me").