According to Melua, the inspiration for the song came during a visit to Beijing with her manager Mike Batt. Their interpreter showed them around the city and told that there are supposedly nine million bicycles in the city. Batt wrote a song based around the title “Nine Million Bicycles” upon his return to England two weeks later, and it was one of the last songs to be recorded for Piece by Piece.

The website indieLondon named it one of the “highlights” of Piece by Piece, describing it as “genuinely sweet… The meandering blasts of flute that weave their way throughout lend the song a Chinese feel and make it quite enticing”.The single’s video, directed by Kevin Godley, features Melua being dragged across the floor through a variety of settings, including a brief shot of the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan, Chinese: 颐和园/頤和園) in Beijing, until she returns to a picnic in a park with her friends.“Nine Million Bicycles” was released as the album’s first single in September 2005 and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Melua’s first top five hit as a solo artist. According to Melua, the inspiration for the song came during a visit to Beijing with her manager Mike Batt. And there are nine million bicycles in Beijing And you know that I will love you till I die! It was a finalist for The Record of the Year prize, losing to “You Raise Me Up” by Westlife.The song was featured prominently in a high-profile radio and television advertising campaign for the Slovenian cell-phone operator Mobitel.I have a feeling this about teenager on bikes around expert drivers getting somewhere

Adrian Brett, who played the ethnic flutes on Batt’s album Caravans (1978), contributed to the song; an ocarina was used for the low sounds, and a Chinese bamboo flute for the high sounds.Melua said that she liked the song “because it is a simple juxtaposition of a trivial idea (‘Nine Million Bicycles’) against an important idea (‘I will love you till I die’)”.