Where the Wild Roses Grow

Where the Wild Roses Grow was released in October 1995 as the lead single from Murder Ballads. Cave wrote it, Tony Cohen and Victor Van Vugt produced it, and Kylie Minogue sings the part of the victim. Cave said he wrote it with Minogue in mind after a quiet obsession with her lasting about six years. It is a dialogue between a killer and his victim. He took the idea from the traditional song Down in the Willow Garden, which he arranged as a B-side called The Willow Garden. Before she recorded it, Minogue was sent a version with Blixa Bargeld singing her lines, and that guide track is on B-Sides & Rarities (2005).

It was the band's most successful single worldwide. It reached three in Norway, the top five in Australia and the top twenty in Britain, Ireland, Germany and New Zealand, and it went gold in Germany and in Australia. It reached eight in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 1995, and it won ARIA awards in 1996. Rocky Schenck directed the video, in which Minogue lies in a river in a pose recalling Millais's painting Ophelia. NME placed it 35th among the best songs of the 1990s in 2012.

Live

Cave and Minogue first performed it together in public in Cork on 4 August 1995. She joined the Bad Seeds on stage at All Points East in London on 3 June 2018, and they played it at Glastonbury in 2019.