Songfacts®:

• Frontman Alex Turner discussed this song in an interview with NME: "There's always a load of words in our tunes, isn't there. And I was trying to think of a way of being a bit more economical, so we thought the one way of doing that is having really simple choruses but quite complicated verses lyrically – and that were one of them. I mean it's based on a place that I've been but I don't necessarily want that to be what the listener associates it with. 'Cause maybe they can relate it to a place they've been. I don't want to ruin that by giving them a map. Some great harmonies on this song too. [Producer] James Ford's favourite bit of this record is on that song. It goes 'uh-oh-uh-oh-wo.' Maybe it's because it sounds like the Klaxons. I always think he prefers them to us."
• Turner sings, "She's got a telescopic hallelujah hanging upon her wall/ Well did you ever get the feeling that these are things she said before?" Q magazine asked the vocalist if a 'telescopic hallelujah' is a vibrator? He replied: "No, it's just a story. Quite funny, we definitely wanted a few more… gags."
• Drummer Matt Helders explained the song title to NME: "The hellcat spangled one isn't quite as mad as it sounds. Alex has always been a storyteller, but I think on the last record he tried to dilute that a bit with some more mystery. That's probably carried over. The hellcat thing, that's something that somebody has to come up with, it's not a day-to-day term that everybody uses."