Songfacts®:

• Written by lead singer Hannah Joy, "Bend" is a very vulnerable song for her. It finds her on an emotional precipice, keeping it together but just barely - she's just one bend away from breaking.
  
  In 2023, she starred in an Australian movie called Christmess, directed by Heath Davis. Filming took about a month, and during that time she was living alone in her hotel room, missing her son and feeling pressure to write songs for the next Middle Kids album, which they'd be recording straightaway.
  
  "I was just feeling so overwhelmed by all of the things and feeling like I couldn't really hold it all," she told Women In Pop. "I've got three brothers, my family is really strong alpha male-y and I've always felt like strength is not ever letting that pain touch you, a sign of strength is just to plough through and don't even let yourself be hurt by whatever is going on. It was almost a revelation for myself of saying that actually, it's more brave and strong in a lot of ways to actually let it kind of crush you. Only then can you build up and come back from that, and 'Bend' just came out of that."
• Hannah Joy is married to her bandmate Tim Fitz, who saw the pressure she was under that led to this song. "Hannah has this gear that she can slip into where she presents life in such personal and painful accuracy," he told Songfacts. "It's devastating, and those songs do powerful things. From what I see, it is also hard and takes a toll to reveal and release something like that."
• Like many Middle Kids songs, "Bend" morphed musically into something very different from where it started. The song was originally just acoustic guitar, but when Hannah Joy brought it to her bandmates it became something bigger, with the rousing, emotional chorus.
  
  Joy thought it might be over-the-top, and too personal, but when they performed it at various showcases, it got a great response, a sign that it was connecting with listeners.
• "Bend" was released as a single from the third Middle Kids album, Faith Crisis Pt 1. As the title suggests, much of the album is about getting through the difficult times with some help from faith.