Songfacts®:

• Frontman Guy Garvey (From Uncut magazine February 2008): "'Grounds For Divorce' was written when I was in a unhappy relationship. The words tumbled onto the page before I'd considered their meaning: 'I've been working on a cocktail called Grounds For Divorce.' It relates to the relationship I was in, but it's also a light-hearted look at the aftermath of losing my friend (singer songwriter Bryan Clancy who died in 2006), about wanting to get out of my beloved Manchester. I wanted to live somewhere else, just because of how heavy it got round here."
• Garvey added in an interview with The Sun March 14, 2008: "'Grounds For Divorce' is about all the rubbish stuff then wanting to get out of Manchester, to escape from it all. I was drinking too much. Bryan's death affected me in a bad way. When I am sad I tend to drink too much."
• Garvey also told The Sun that guitarist Mark Potter had the riff for years before utilizing it on this song.
• This was the band's 10th UK Top 75 entry and the third to peak at #19. "Asleep In The Back/Coming Second" in 2002 and "Fallen Angel" in 2003 also reached the same position. None of these ten chart entries managed to climb any higher.
  
  Elbow eventually bettered the chart placing in 2012 when "One Day Like This" peaked #4 in the wake of its use in the Olympic closing ceremony.
  
• This won the award for Best Contemporary Song at the 2009 Ivor Novello awards.