Songfacts®:

• This existential cry for help finds Beck lamenting "the mincemeat of the dreams you hung your hopes on." Beck told Q magazine, "I was gonna change that line. 'Dear Life' is just about the inevitable turmoil of being alive. Like, can somebody throw me a lifeline here?"
• Beck wrote this song with Greg Kurstin, who produced the Colors album. "The first day Greg and I started working together, in January or February of 2013, we talked about the music we both love, from Prince to the Beatles to the Clash to the Pixies," Beck told Vulture. "Then we got up and jammed, and 'Dear Life' was what just came out. It was the easiest song on the album to do, and I think the record could have gone more in this direction. This was our natural default setting as musicians and songwriters. It was like the equivalent of putting on your favorite shirt and just hanging around the house."
  
  Beck wrote the first verse on the spot, but the second verse took a while - he says he went through about 100 versions before finding the right words.