Songfacts®:

• This is the first single from I Never Learn, an album that was written in the wake of a broken relationship. Lykke Li said: "Every song on the album is a power ballad. Like one of those old radio stations. This is a slow dance; a slow burner."
  
  "I wrote ["No Rest for the Wicked"] in Sweden when I was packing up my s--t, and I'd just gotten out of a relationship and it was a horrible time," Li added. "I just had the hurt, shame, sadness, guilt, longing. In the verse, I'm referring to myself pleading guilty but I'm referring to all of us."
• During an interview with The Sun newspaper, the comment was made that the piano on this song has quite a hip-hoppy melody. The interviewer asked Li if this was deliberate? She replied: "Nothing I do is deliberate, whenever I create. I simply let go and pour out whatever I am feeling and visioning, like, whatever. I'm in the mood for – which in retrospect can be a cocktail mix full of inspiration."
  
  "I think what I've always loved about hip-hop is the urgency, but the same goes for the blues," she continued. "Hopefully what I do is somewhere in between."
• The phrase "No rest for the wicked" is a phrase originating from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah verses 48:22 and 57:20-21.
  
  Isaiah 48:22 " 'There is no peace,' says the Lord, 'for the wicked.' "
  Isaiah 57:20-21 "But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace," says my God, "to the wicked."