Songfacts®:

• "Father" is about John Grant's conflicted relationship with his dad - a man who was wonderfully kind but held firm to his strict religious beliefs. The song is set in Grant's childhood home in Buchanan, Michigan, and stems from a visit he made to it one winter later in life.
  
  "We'd gone back for my grandmother's funeral in Michigan," Grant recalled to Mojo magazine. "Growing up, her house was right across the street from ours. And as we were leaving to go back to the airport, my brother and I saw that our old house, that my father built with his own hand, was sitting empty across the street. The people who lived there had just moved out. It was completely dark on the inside, with a beautiful light snow falling. And my brother said, 'Come on, let's go in there.' And I walked through the house of my childhood for one last time. It was such a profound experience for me. I just had to write a song about it. It percolated inside me for quite a long time."
• Musically, "Father" carries a serene and contemplative tone, where John Grant's use of Auto-Tune melds harmoniously with his natural voice. This choice enhances the song's reflective atmosphere, presenting a delicate contrast to the feelings of disappointment, personal struggle, and the burdens of rigid religious expectations that Grant recounts.
• The song is the third track on Grant's sixth album, The Art of the Lie, part of a section exploring family relationships. The album began to take shape in 2022 after Grant met producer Ivor Guest (Grace Jones, Beyoncé) at the Meltdown Festival. Describing the album's sound, Grant compared it to Vangelis' score for Blade Runner, or "the Carpenters if John Carpenter was also a member."
  
  "The clothing that it's dressed up in makes it more palatable," he added. "It helps the bitter pill go down. Music and humor are how I've always dealt with the dark side of life. Come to think of it, it's how I deal with the good side too."
• John Grant isn't sure if his father has heard the song. "That's a tough one, because in some ways I don't want him to hear it," he reflected to Mojo magazine in 2025. "Yet I felt I had to write it. I definitely struggle with it because I feel it's one of the best things I've ever done, but it's also one of the most painful things too."