Songfacts®:

• This was released as the lead single from Jessie Ware's third studio album, Glasshouse. The song is a meditation on desire and longing. "'Midnight' is the song I've always wanted to be able to sing but perhaps didn't have the confidence until now," said the English songstress.
• Ware wrote much the Glasshouse album while pregnant with her first baby. Its title came from a poem by Edward Thomas called "I Built Myself a House of Glass." Asked by Billboard magazine about the reasoning behind the album name, Ware replied:
  
  "Glasshouse, I guess for me represents this beautiful thing, which is very easy to shatter. I've become a mother; it's changed my world for the better. But I'm also learning how to do it. Also, I think I've given more of myself in this record. Like, I've let people know more about me than maybe I have before, which I was ready to do and I was kind of unaware that I was doing until listening back to what songs I've chosen.
  
  There's a lot about my family and relationships and my baby and my husband - quite directly [there is a song] called 'Sam.' So, it's about me working out this situation and trying to do the best, but also knowing that it's quite a fragile, funny situation."
• The song's music video, filmed on the streets of Mallorca, Spain, was directed by Tom Beard. The clip follows Ware wandering streets at nighttime, with flashes of a mysterious male body submerged in the ocean. It is the second part of a two-part-story – The visual for "Selfish Love" provides the back story. "We shot from 1am until the sun came up and the video was so much fun to make," Ware said.