Songfacts®:

• On this terse, synth-heavy track, Alexis Taylor sings of families divided against their will and the value of strong friends. "It's about the world smashing into you, waves crashing into you, all-encompassing pain,' Taylor explained, "and how you have to walk through it."
• In 1953, the Irish novelist and dramatist Samuel Beckett bought some land near a hamlet around 60 km (40 miles) northeast of Paris. He built a cottage for himself with the help of Boris Roussimoff, the father of the French professional wrestler and actor André The Giant. Beckett gave the young André a lift to school in his truck because he was too big for the bus.
  
  In the song's second verse, Hot Chip compares the titular "Eleanor" to "a river flowing that will never stop" and "the toughest tree that withstands the chop." They then recount Becket's drives with André The Giant and how the Irish writer must have learned a lot from Andre's wisdom.
• Hot Chip recorded "Eleanor" for Freakout/Release. The band recorded the album in their Relax & Enjoy studio in east London, a creative space that guitarist Al Doyle put together before and during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Lyrically, Freakout/Release explores murkier emotions than previous Hot Chip albums, as the band charts the ways people survive even amidst immovable struggles. "We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways," co-vocalist Joe Goddard explained. "There's a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks."