And then there’s “The Prayer,” the first single. You can hear Okereke’s voice multi-tracked to the high heavens. It was inspired by “St Luke’s Passion” by Penderecki, which the frontman listened to religiously for much of this year. “I was rethinking my voice as a separate instrument. I was stacking it and distorting it.” Aiding this ambition was producer Jacknife Lee. He helped the band rethink what guitars–what rock–could do, and conjured up sonic wizardry at the flick of a Pro-Tools switch. Lee’s thoughts were particularly important in the creation of “The Prayer,” a staggering, motoring song destined to start warping radio airwaves any minute now. For all the serious themes and issues laid bare elsewhere on A Weekend in the City, do the lyrics to “The Prayer” prove that Kele “Mr Serious” Okereke has actually discovered that fame and success and ‘avin it is a good laugh? “Yeeeeaah…” he says slowly, smiling bashfully. It was clear that, for all the dark material in the new songs, he was happier, more sure of himself, more up for it. “It’s weird,” he continues, “All these lyrics, save this one, I agonised over for months and months and months. Whereas this one started off with a different feel, perspective. Garrett [Lee] really encouraged me to try and do something that wasn’t quite so meticulous. So with this song I was trying to cut my mind off from trying to rationalise everything. The first words just came to me. I wanted it to be something that would move people on to the dance floor but in a real throwaway way. I think there’s great validity in telling people that you don’t have to try and over-intellectualise everything. With "The Prayer,” I was trying not to think.“
– A Weekend in the City’s liner notes

At first this seems to be a song about social anxiety and asking God for inner strength to overcome it, but it seems the “lord” he is praying to could also be cocaine. The line “I will slice” seems slightly out of place with the surrounding lyrics in the chorus and could be referring to chopping up cocaine (users ‘slice’ up lines with bank cards or razor blades).

This seems to be reinforced by the video in which we see Kele hallucinating in a drug-like haze.