Songfacts®:

• Here, Michael Kiwanuka is eulogizing a healing love that can deliver him from a life of "sadness and fury." The song was inspired by the singer's wife, Charlotte. He told the BBC in 2019: "I've been a married man for three years and there's nothing else like it. It's just so solid. It's so therapeutic to know there's two of you on the same team. That kind of love is the thing that gets me through the difficulties."
• Kiwanuka told the New York Times that he used to always love melancholy songs, but now he's married he finds he is writing differently. "I do want to sing about more joyful things, instead of just 'Cold Little Heart,'" he said.
  
  The singer added this song originally had a different theme and chorus - "My oh my, it's sad in love." He and his producer Danger Mouse liked it a lot, and it rhymed perfectly, but he just couldn't sing the lyrics because they were too negative. He decided this was his moment to move away from his love of melancholy songs.
  
  "When I went to record it for the album, I told the engineer that I had to change the lyrics," he said. "So now it's 'My oh my, this kind of love,' and it's about how even in the hard times, love is what gets you through. If I had left it the other way, I wouldn't have been able to perform it every night. It wouldn't have been true."
• The song is preceded by an intro. Kiwanuka explained to Apple Music it came about when he was playing some bass and co-producer Inflo was playing some piano. Kiwanuka "started singing my idea of a Marvin Gaye soul tune - a deep, dark, melancholic cut from one of his '70s records." Then the other producer, Danger Mouse, had the idea, "Why don't you pitch some of it down so it sounds different?'"
• New York served as an inspiration for "Piano Joint." Kiwanuka explained to Q Magazine: "The chords made me think of '70s New York and that soulful sound, like, Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack. It has that kind of regalness to it."