Songfacts®:

• The lead single from A Fever Dream, "Can't Do" was recorded with Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode and Haim producer James Ford.
  
  "'Can't Do' is about trying to bend to the world and fit into it," said frontman Jonathan Higgs. "Nobody is normal, nobody knows what normal is. 'I can't do the thing you want' – we don't care we just want you to dance."
• Everything Everything debuted the song on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show on June 13, 2017. Higgs explained to the DJ how the song's lyrics were inspired by his struggles to come up with suitable words to tie in with guitarist Alex Robertshaw's music:
  
  "It comes from the oldest theme in the book, which is writer's block, really, at the heart of it. Alex had written this amazing tune and he said, 'Sing something on it,' and I was like, Well, what do I sing? What do I sing? And after lots of tries I just kind of gave up and went, 'I can't do it! I can't do the thing you want!'
  
  The rest of the lyrics are kind of based around, kind of just talking about not feeling like you fit in with the world. You can't do the thing that everyone else wants you to do, you have to sort of bend in order to make things work. That whole feeling of feeling like you just can't do it, but then you can dance it away."
• Higgs explained the album title. "We wanted to make a record that sounds like a nightmarish, surreal, dreamy exciting experience, everything that life has mashed up. We thought a fever dream was the best way to describe it."