Songfacts®:

• English Teacher frontwoman Lily Fontaine is mixed race, with a Caribbean heritage on her father's side and a white British background on her mother's. This song tackles topics like racial identity, self-love, and the pernicious grip of imposter syndrome.
• Fontaine uses "R&B" to air her frustrations with being pigeonholed as a musician of color. She sings with blistering passion:
  
  If I have stuff to write, then why don't I just write it for me?
  Despite appearances, I haven't got the voice for R&B
  
  The inspiration for "R&B" came from a period of writer's block during a relationship. Ironically, the only idea that emerged was an R&B-style melody, a genre people often assumed she would work in due to her racial background. After the relationship ended, Fontaine transformed that melody into the lyrics and riff for "R&B" and brought it to her bandmates.
  
  "Not always, but there's been times when we meet another musician, and the look on their face is a big shock when I say that I make guitar music," Fontaine shared with Billboard.
• English Teacher started as a dream-pop outfit called Frank. "R&B" marked the first track created in their current post-punk iteration. The song was initially released in 2021, but they gave it a grungier makeover for their debut album, This Could Be Texas.
• Marta Salogni, an Italian-born producer and mixer based in London, produced the album version of "R&B." She is known for her work with an eclectic mix of artists, including Björk, Depeche Mode, M.I.A., and Animal Collective.
• The avant-garde music video was directed by Sarah Oglesby, English Teacher's go-to visual collaborator. The band describes it as "an ode to the chaos of the calm and the calm of the chaos," and a tribute to what they deem the greatest TV show of all time, The Shivering Truth.
• Before she joined English Teacher, Lily Fontaine sang in pubs and clubs, where her repertoire revolved around Amy Winehouse, Adele and Bessie Smith. "I didn't have role models who I felt were connected to my race and gender," Fontaine told Mojo magazine. "The songwriters I looked up to were John Lennon, Alex Turner, Morrissey, for all his sins, he's a great lyricist. That's probably why it took me so long to make my own music in that style. I didn't clock on to the fact that I could.