Questions

Album: Today We're The Greatest (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • In "Questions," Middle Kids lead singer Hannah Joy looks back on her early 20s, when she did a lot of drinking and found herself in lots of intimate relationships that weren't so intimate. "Everything seemed fun and sparkly all the time, but then I realized that I'm not engaging with anyone properly, or myself properly," she explained to The Guardian. "I had all these relationships [with men], but they were nighttime relationships. I wouldn't even know what to do if I saw them during the day."

    Joy had lots of questions but couldn't get a straight answer because alcohol and emotional distance clouded the truth.

    "'Questions' came from this place of looking back and going, what the hell? I was bouncing around like a reckless, drunk little girl," she added.
  • Hannah Joy wrote this song with her Middle Kids bandmate Tim Fitz, who is also her husband. When they were recording the song, Joy was pregnant with their first child and had stopped drinking. "I had to learn how to engage with him without alcohol, which is really challenging," she said. "It was a big challenge in our relationship and it still can be, actually. I was a bit of a loose canon at the beginning and I realized that I want to be able to honor this relationship, so I've got to sort something out."

    Taking a year off drinking helped. "For a while it was this big thing I was dealing with, but I don't really feel like that any more," she says. "So I think Questions came from this place of looking back and going, what the hell? I was bouncing around like a reckless, drunk little girl."
  • The song is part of the second Middle Kids album, Today We're The Greatest, released as the second single, following "R U 4 Me?" By this time, the band had a sizable following in their native Australia and had made inroads in America, which they barnstormed after releasing their 2016 debut single, "Edge Of Town."
  • Unusually for Middle Kids, there are horns on this song, which were played by their fellow Aussie Brendan Champion, who has backed Taylor Swift on trombone.
  • The music video is kind of bonkers. Directed by W.A.M. Bleakley, it's one continuous shot showing Middle Kids performing the song in a cabaret, where the patrons and staff play clapping games along to the beat. Later, a marching band and a horse join in on the action.

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