Songfacts®:

• Asked about the song's meaning by Radio.com, Cold War Kids frontman Nathan Willet replied: "I think it's got something in common with probably a large number of Cold War Kids songs, kind of overcoming some doubt. There's a story there where there's like somebody just kind of burning out and needs to get their life back together."
  
  "There are some very clear things in there; it's just the idea of like waking up in somebody's front lawn with the sprinklers turning on and not knowing where you are."
• This was released as the second single off Hold My Home but it nearly didn't make it onto the album. Willet explained: "It was literally just the last, last, last song for the record where we were thinking it was just maybe a B-side or something, and we thought, 'Okay, we'll finish this one.' And the minute that we were sending these songs in to the label and management and said, 'Okay, these are all done,' and people freaked out the minute they heard that song. And we were shocked. And they were like, 'This is gonna be a great single,' and we were like, 'Wow, okay. So we'll put it on the record, we won't just let it be a B-side.'"
• The song lived up to its title, by becoming Cold War Kids' first ever #1 when it topped the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. It spent seven weeks at the summit.
• According to data from Broadcast Data Systems, "First" was the most-played song of the 2010s on Alternative radio. It determined the song's 214,342 spins was the most of any song on the format over the decade.