Cuomo wrote “Across The Sea” after receiving a fan letter from Japan. A young girl wrote to him, asking several questions about his everyday life during the depressing winter he spent at Harvard University in 1995. Some of these questions actually appear in the song, as the opening lyrics show. On his relationship with the girl, Cuomo remarked, “When I got the letter, I fell in love with her. It was such a great letter. I was very lonely at the time, but at the same time I was very depressed that I would never meet her. Even if I did see her, she was probably some fourteen-year-old girl, who didn’t speak English.”

The album is named after a character in the opera Madame Butterfly. The album, and this song in particular, is loosely based on the opera, which is about an American military officer who goes to Japan and falls in love with a geisha.