 The fanfare-like synthesizer lines of "Miles Away" were reminiscent of the track "Slow Motion" which opened the album "Systems of Romance", Foxx's last with former band Ultravox.Regarding the song's title and subject matter, Foxx said "You know when you're looking out of a window or you're not quite present, you know you're with someone but your mind is on something else, and that is quite often my state of mind I think, so I decided to write a song about it.