Songfacts®:

• Here, Arlo Parks sings of a lover who is unwilling to show their feelings. The songstress is hurt that her love interest keeps pushing her away, reasoning her partner is "too proud to tell me that you care."
• Parks recorded the song for her debut studio album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, which is a collection of vignettes about her adolescence. This song finds her overthinking and overanalyzing a relationship where her lover is not a good communicator. Parks told Coup De Main she's matured since the era she's writing about. "I think at the time I wanted romantic feelings to be warm and simple when in reality there are so many facets and knots when it comes to love," said the singer.
• Paul Epworth, a producer who has worked with Adele, Florence + the Machine and Coldplay, helped Parks write this song. She told Apple Music it came from one of their first sessions, after she'd showed him the music she was passionate about, "from '70s Zambian psychedelic rock to MF DOOM and the hip-hop that I love via Tame Impala and big '90s throwback pop by TLC."
  
  Parks added: "From there, it was a whirlwind. Paul started playing this drumbeat, and then I was just running around for ages singing into mics and going off to do stuff on the guitar."
• This is one of two tracks Epworth produced on Collapsed in Sunbeams, the other being "Portra 400."
• Collapsed In Sunbeams takes its title from a phrase in Zadie Smith's book On Beauty. Parks took inspiration for the songs after rereading a diary she began keeping when she was 13. "This whole album is basically just my journal," she told New York Times. "It's a time capsule of adolescence."
• Arlo Parks released a remix by Unknown Mortal Orchestra on July 28, 2021. According to Parks, this interpretation strips the song down to "a sense of intimate, hypnotic hurt."
• Arlo Parks won the 2021 Hyundai Mercury Prize for her Collapsed In Sunbeams album.
  
  Annie Macmanus, one of the prize judges, said on behalf of the panel: "Addressing such complex issues as mental health and sexuality with real empathy, displaying a lyrical wisdom that belied her 21 years, with Collapsed In Sunbeams Arlo Parks has created an album that has captured the spirit of the year in a positive, forward thinking fashion."
  
  After being presented with her award, Parks performed the song to a standing ovation.