Editing Sleeping with Ghosts (section)

== Content ==

Frontman [[Brian Molko]], who is known to be a fan of the band [[Sonic Youth]],<ref>{{cite journal|date=August 1997 |title=The Boy Can't Help It |journal=[[Guitarist (magazine)|Guitarist]] |url=http://www.placeboworld.co.uk/archive/guitaris.htm |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070508233148/http://www.placeboworld.co.uk/archive/guitaris.htm |archivedate=8 May 2007 |accessdate=3 July 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref> references lyrics from their album ''[[Sister (Sonic Youth album)|Sister]]'' on "Plasticine" ("Beauty lies inside the eye of another youthful dream" directly references "Beauty lies in the eyes of another's dream" from Sonic Youth's "Beauty Lies in the Eye").

The album has several songs based on a theme of relationships, such as relationships that end badly ("[[The Bitter End (song)|The Bitter End]]"), power struggles in relationships ("[[Special Needs (song)|Special Needs]]") or the idea that some are meant to be eternal [[soulmate]]s (the title track). Brian Molko told ''[[Kerrang!]]'' magazine: "I'm looking back to what's happened in my past emotional decade, trying to understand it. Trying to exorcise the ghosts and the demons of relationships past. It's the old cliché of it being therapeutic but it does work for me in that way."<ref>{{cite journal |date=March 2003 |title=Natural Born Chillers |journal=[[Kerrang!]] |url=http://www.placeborussia.ru/press/press-2002-2003/kerrangmar03 |accessdate=3 April 2012 |archive-date=2 February 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202153248/http://www.placeborussia.ru/press/press-2002-2003/kerrangmar03 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Another interview has Molko explaining:

<blockquote>The album title's about carrying the ghosts of your relationships with you, to the point where sometimes a smell or a situation or an item of clothing they bought brings a person back. For me it's about the relationship that you have with your memories. They inhabit your dreams sometimes. There can be a lot in the future that's gonna remind you of the ghost of relationships past. So I see the album as a collection of short stories about a handful of relationships. Most of them mine. In a way writing the songs helps me to get a lot of the nasty feelings off my chest and put them in a box, and therefore have a bit more of an objective discourse with those emotions because you've done something positive with them, you've rid yourself of them.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.abc.net.au/rage/guest/2003/placebo03.htm |title=Placebo – Guest Program ''Rage'' |date=9 August 2003 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation|accessdate=3 July 2013}}</ref></blockquote>