Many of the compositions carry the influence of Broadway theatre and McAloon found inspiration in songwriters including Rodgers and Hart, Burt Bacharach and Rod Temperton. Writing in 2022, John Earls of Classic Pop considered the album to be Prefab Sprout's most "band-sounding", remarking "Martin McAloon and drummer Neil Conti's rhythm section were never so fluid." Songs Tracks 1–5 The first five tracks on the album are straightforward pop songs with no deliberate linking theme. "Looking for Atlantis" is based around McAloon's nylon string Ibanez guitar and atypically uses only two chords. McAloon has summarised the song's sentiment as "stop wasting time, find someone and fall in love with them". McAloon considered the hip hop-influenced "Wild Horses" to be one of the album's best songs. Lyrically, it is written from the point of view of "the older man longing for the younger girl, without it being seedy". He initially contemplated sending the song for Daryl Hall's consideration. The actress Jenny Agutter recorded the spoken words that accompany the song's instrumental section. "Machine Gun Ibiza" utilises funk rhythms and wah-wah guitar in an arrangement Time Out compared to the work of Sly Stone. The song originated in a pub conversation referencing both Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun" and Ibiza, and lyrically concerns a hero partly based on Hendrix and described by McAloon as "the coolest guy on the planet". The character is referred to as "a top rollmo star" – 'rollmo' being a word McAloon dreamt Michael Jackson taught him. The ballad "We Let the Stars Go" was composed on piano on the morning of 29 August 1988; McAloon had tickets to see Jackson in Leeds that day but ultimately didn't go. The song's features the name "Paddy Joe" in reference to McAloon's own given names Patrick Joseph. He has described it as "a boy-loses-girl song with a little bit of autobiographical detail thrown in". "Carnival 2000" is about the celebrating the turn of the Millennium. The song began as a simple piano piece before being worked up into a samba-inspired production at the insistence of Dolby. Tracks 6–9 (Elvis) Tracks six through nine constitute what McAloon called "the Elvis section" as all four songs were written for or about Elvis Presley. "Jordan: The Comeback" imagines Presley, who died in 1977, still alive and living a reclusive existence in the Nevada desert. He has become distant from rock and roll and is waiting