Video hit Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Into My Arms

Into My Arms is a song written by Nick Cave, and released as the first single from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' tenth studio album The Boatman's Call in 1997. The single, released on 27 January 1997, was pressed on 7" vinyl, as well as a standard CD single.

The song takes the form of a love ballad, with a piano and an acoustic bass as the sole instruments used. Music journalist and critic Toby Creswell included "Into My Arms" in his book 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories and Secrets Behind Them, in which he attributed the song's melancholic lyrics to the break-up of Cave's long-term relationship with Viviane Carneiro and his subsequent brief relationship and break-up with English musician P.J. Harvey.

In Cave's lecture "The Secret Life of the Love Song" to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, he counts the song among those he is most proud of having written.

Nick Cave performed the song at the funeral of his friend, INXS singer Michael Hutchence, but requested the cameras recording the service be switched off as he performed.

The song's music video was directed by British director Jonathan Glazer.

In an interview on the DVD The Work of Director Jonathan Glazer, Nick Cave praised the video as well-produced, but said he considered it a poor fit with the song as the video's depressing imagery overrode the melancholic optimism Cave had intended the song to convey.

The lyrics:

I don't believe in an interventionist God

But I know darling that you do

But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him

Not to intervene when it came to you

Not to touch a hair on your head

To leave you as you are

And if He felt He had to direct you

Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms O Lord

Into my arms O Lord

Into my arms O Lord

Into my arms

And I don't believe in the existence of angels

But looking at you I wonder if that's true

But if I did I would summon them together

And ask them to watch over you

To each burn a candle for you

To make bright and clear your path

And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love

And guide you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms

And I believe in Love

And I know that you do too

And I believe in some kind of path

That we can walk down, me and you

So keep your candle burning

And make her journey bright and pure

That she will keep returning

Always and evermore

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms, O Lord

Into my arms