Songfacts®:

• Kim Deal's struggles with substance abuse were, to put it mildly, not exactly a state secret. By the late '90s, her fondness for drugs and alcohol had become as much a part of her reputation as her distinctive, fuzzy basslines. But by 2002, she'd had enough. She checked herself into rehab, quit drinking and smoking pot, and has stayed sober ever since.
  
  Somewhere along the way - around 1999, to be precise - Deal ended up in Nantucket, a picturesque coastal retreat off Cape Cod. The trip wasn't exactly a vacation; it was an attempt to dry out.
  
  "I was completely defeated," she told Uncut magazine. "Seeing these kids running around in the daytime... there's a daytime? I didn't know. It was really heartwarming and important for me to see that."
  This moment of seaside revelation eventually helped inspire "Coast."
• Deal started writing this breezy surf-rock tune during the drug-abusing years leading up to Title TK, the Breeders' 2002 comeback album.
  
  But the final push to complete the song didn't come until much later, at her friend Mike Montgomery's wedding, where she heard the house band - the Grape Whizzers - play Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville." Something about that performance must have clicked, because soon after "Coast" was finished and ready to go.
• On July 15, 2024, Kim Deal released "Coast" as the first single from her debut solo album, Nobody Loves You More. The song's lyrics hint at fresh starts and hard landings:
  
  I've had a hard, hard landing
  I really should duck and roll out
  
  It's one of several tracks on the album that grapple with the idea of beginning again, a subject Deal has given a lot of thought. "I have regrets, of course," she told The Guardian about her years of drug abuse. "I guess that is wanting to disappear from the dumbness that I just did."
  
  She paused for emphasis. "I. Did. Not. Like. Them. They were a waste of time."
• Steve Albini, a frequent collaborator, engineered much of Nobody Loves You More, while Deal produced. Albini approached it with the same raw, no-frills ethos he applied to the Pixies' Surfer Rosa in 1988 - except this time, he also recorded a Chicago marching band called Mucca Pazza. "He's better with me solo," Deal quipped. "He was more open to being adventurous."
• When Deal determines whether a song becomes a Breeders track or a Kim Deal solo song, she takes into account the different tastes of Breeders guitarist (and her sister) Kelley and Breeders bassist Josephine Wigg.
  
  "When I wrote 'Coast,' I could hear the horn part in my head, and I tried to get Kelley to play the whole part on guitar," she told Mojo magazine. "But it didn't sound as fun. I knew it would be more fun to have the horns. But I knew Josephine wouldn't like that, so..."