Songfacts®:

• This is the title track of Idles' fourth studio album, Crawler. Made with co-producers Kenny Beats and guitarist Mark Bowen, the record tells the story of frontman Joe Talbot's 15-year struggle with substance abuse. "If you don't like hearing tales of struggle then you won't like it," Talbot told Mojo magazine. "But it makes me feel happy because I'm here. I'm alive."
• "Crawl!" marks the turning point in the album after Talbot has crashed. "It's a good anthem for me to discuss with people who aren't on the other side or who aren't sober," said the singer to Consequence Of Sound. "You're not the best version of you and you need to hold yourself accountable for your addictions and who you're letting down. But it doesn't mean you're a bad person."
• There's a realization that Talbot's dependency may be harmful, but it enables him to function. "If you're being forced to crawl, you've surrendered to the notion that you can't get up and run or walk," said Bowen. "You're having to surrender your hands and knees to the process of moving forward. Joe was dealing with a lot of these traumas and things going on in his life, and one of the ways he was dealing with them was with drugs and alcohol."
  
  "He wasn't able to walk, run or deal with it, so he had to crawl through it," Bowen added. "It's the first track on the album where you see the defiance of that: this is what I am."
• Talbot's vocals find him having a conversation with different people. He took inspiration from the way The Notorious B.I.G. manipulates his voice on his Ready To Die track "Gimme The Loot" to make it sound like two different people. "I wanted to do it like "Gimme The Loot' – you know where it [sounds like] two people and it's the same octave, but he's [using a] low and high timbre," he explained in a behind the scenes video.
  
  "So, he just uses his throat and his diaphragm between two people and it's f---ing sick."
• The Eddie Lawrence-directed video features a claymation version of Talbot riding a motorcycle while singing the lyrics.
• Idles performed the gritty track on the April 14, 2022 episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Filling in on short notice for Spoon, who were forced to cancel because of COVID-19 exposure, the band played a pre-recorded version of "Crawl!" performed at Glasgow's Barrowlands.