Songfacts®:

• This synth-filled breakup song is the opening track of American Dream. It finds James Murphy sadly recognizing the relationship is coming to an end.
  
  Oh lover
  You run from me
  We move like a bad scene
  Shot in the dark
• Uncut Magazine asked James Murphy whether "Oh Baby" is a personal song or more abstract than that. He replied:
  
  "I've been allowing myself to write from different times of my life. 'Oh Baby,' 'I Used To,' 'American Dream'… That doesn't feel weird if you're writing a story but (with music) people imagine that you literally walked in from an event, walked up to a microphone and sang about that day - which does actually happen with me, but not all the time. If I had to pick two things that were running themes in this record; One is dealing with the aesthetic and emotional world of my '80s, in a way that is un-judgemental; and the other is dealing with an overwhelming amount of people dying since the last record. And also people that I value that I don't know personally."
• The video was directed by Star Wars: The Last Jedi filmmaker Rian Johnson. Starring Sissy Spacek and David Strathairn, the clip follows two scientists who are in the midst of developing a teleportation device and embark "on a devastatingly romantic journey of discovery, tragedy and eternal love," until their work gets disrupted by tragic circumstances.