Songfacts®:

• "Paper Planes" is a whimsical, nostalgic song evoking the innocence and imagination of youth. Speaking to Uncut magazine, Edwyn Collins said the lyric sprang from "a snatched memory from childhood... a simple thought in my head. I grabbed it and made it a song."
  
  That fleeting recollection is why the verses feel dreamlike, circling images of classrooms, paper planes and the hush of a summer afternoon rather than spelling out a plot.
• The melody was sparked by Donovan's song "Poor Cow," which Collins first came across as a child when he bought Donovan's single "Jennifer Juniper," with "Poor Cow" as the B-side. Collins told Uncut he'd been strumming the folk hero's descending guitar pattern at home and "couldn't shake the feel of it," so he borrowed the cadence and rewrote it in his own key.
• Recorded at the singer's Clashnarrow Studio in Helmsdale, Scotland, according to engineer Jake Hutton, the released take is literally the first take. He told Tape Op magazine Collins sang a guide vocal that "felt right," so they kept it, overdubbing only a Wurlitzer and hand claps.
• The faint harmony in the final chorus is by Collins' wife and manager, Grace Maxwell. She receives no formal credit in the liner notes, a tiny Easter egg for fans who know her voice from earlier albums.
• Collins' 2005 cerebral hemorrhage left him initially unable to speak more than two words; "paper" and "plane" were among the nouns his speech therapist used in early recovery drills. He joked at a Rough Trade East in-store Q&A that sneaking them into a single title was "cheap therapy - and cheaper rhyming."