Songfacts®:

• Conor Oberst's brother, Matthew, died unexpectedly in his sleep at his North Carolina home in November 2016 aged 42. His specter flits across several of the Down In The Weeds, Where The World songs, and on "Tilt-A-Whirl" he visits the Bright Eyes frontman as a ghost.
• Loss is a big theme on Down In The Weeds, Where the World Once Was and the album is dedicated to Matthew Oberst.
  
  "It's different when you lose someone so close to you," Oberst explained to Uncut magazine. "It hits you in ways you don't see coming. It's been four years, and it's still there. I'm sure it will always be. You think you'll heal a little, and then it feels like you haven't healed at all. I don't think anybody gets over I've lost like that."
  
  "I know that Down In The Weeds, Where the World Once Was is not the most hopeful title," he added. "But I think it is a meditation on lost, like the whole album is, but hopefully not in a completely wondering, breathing way, more of a defiant, just carry on kind of thing."
• Singer and producer Andy LeMaster contributes vocals to this song. The Athens, Georgia, musician has been a frequent touring member of Bright Eyes since the late 1990s and has sung on every record of theirs since 1998's Letting Off the Happiness. He contributed to two tracks on Down In The Weeds, this tune and "Calais to Dover." Oberst told Apple Music: "I had to call a band meeting and be like, 'We need Andy's magic little angel voice on these ones.' Because we've been singing together so long and he knows how to scream exactly like me."