I like that about my songs, that people use them for their own purpose. A romantic ideal! I know that a young couple won’t hear this about me and Linda, the guy will hear it about him and his girlfriend, the girl will hear that it’s about her and her boyfriend, and I like that. It could just be an ideal - we all love someone and wish we could spend more time with that someone. But people often say to me, ‘Who did you write this about?’ and even though then I would have been writing specifically about Linda - because she was the object of my affection - I liked the idea that it could also be the sort of dream of romance.
And you know for me at that time it was about Linda. After a robbery goes badly wrong in the western town of Blackwater, Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang are forced. I elaborated on that theme, it’s just someone wishing they could spend more time with their loved one. What is this thing in life that persuades me to take time away from you? And so I thought, yeah you could call those distractions from the main event kind of thing. Because you’ve got things to do, you’ve got work or you’ve got other obligations to other people or whatever. After a robbery goes wrong in the town of Blackwater, Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang are forced to flee. It just occurred to me that if you love someone, one of the problems is that you don’t always spend enough time with that person. And it’s always nice to be in the mood to write a ballad and that was the case when I sat down to write this.
Speaking earlier this week to PM.com about ‘Distractions', Paul said: To celebrate the forthcoming reissue of Paul McCartney’s 1989 Flowers In The Dirt album an exclusive demo of the album track ‘Distractions’ has been made available for download on.