Songfacts®:

• This is the title track of the second album by Broken Bells, an Indie Rock project comprising vocalist James Mercer of The Shins and producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton. The LP was written with both Mercer and Danger Mouse in the room, and the division of labor was 50-50. "We both play the instruments, we both work out the melodies and we both write the lyrics," Burton told NME. "When it came to lyrics, we'd sit in the room and discuss it together. This record is really personal, especially for me, and James is somebody I really trust in that way."
• Danger Mouse told Mojo magazine the After the Disco title is a reference to, "growing up, finally, and trying to be responsible about things." He added: "It's like when you're done partying, you wake up the next day and have to figure everything out. James and I lead very different lives, but we both share the same feelings: Are we really grown up? Is this what life is? Were both trying to figure that out."
• Mercer told NME that this song is, "our attempt at something you'd hear on a dance floor."
• Danger Mouse spoke to Stereogum about the track's creation. He said: "It was the first song that we did lyrics to. We still made a lot of the album after that, but we usually wait towards the end to do our lyrics. But that one we decided to just go ahead and finish the song right then and there. That's a little significant because as we were continuing, we liked the title and the name of it, and we started to think that we liked the title and the concept of it,. But we still had a lot of album to make after that. But that was where it came from."
  
  "Obviously it wasn't anything to do with disco, and we've had to explain that a lot because nothing on the record really sounds likes disco music at all," Danger Mouse continued. "This song would have been done about a year ago, so there wasn't that whole Daft Punk disco-y thing yet. We just thought 'After The Disco,' it's a cool sounding thing. Kind of, 'After the party is over with, there's the rest of your life.' It was simple enough to us, and we never thought anyone would ever think our music was disco because if you listen to it, it's just not. But, of course, our first single sounds a little like the Bee Gees, so we kind of screwed ourselves into having to talk about that after adding 'After The Disco,' it adds up to something to think about."
• The music video, directed by Nelson de Castro, begins with Broken Bells performing on a darkened set and follows Mercer and Danger Mouse on a party-go-round as they repeatedly pass through rooms full of partygoers frozen in time until the action winds down "after the disco." Then, they spin in reverse and end up back on stage.