Songfacts®:

• This song references lead singer Jim James' accident when he fell off the stage in Iowa City, Iowa and was forced to cancel the band's fall European tour in 2008 because of his injuries. The My Morning Jacket frontman told Mojo: "The details of that experience had affected me so deeply. We go through cycles of health. One year we're kicking ass, the next year we're eating dirt."
• A few years before he tumbled off the stage in Iowa, James faced another serious health issue. While the band was touring in support of their Z album, the singer was hospitalized with pneumonia that developed into pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining of the heart, and nearly died. His brushes with mortality increased his spiritual curiosity, which was the basis of his 2013 solo debut, Regions Of Light And Sound Of God.
  
  The religious themes spilled over onto MMJ's The Waterfall, where on "Compound Fracture" he comes to the conclusion that God and the Devil are made-up constructs and, "There's no evil, there's no good, Only people doing as they should." In a 2013 interview with The New York Times, James explained why he tends to sing about God when he's not a believer in the traditional sense.
  
  "For me, it's more powerful to hear people sing about God than love in most circumstances because I've been hearing people sing about love for most of my life," he said. "I don't really believe in a God, like a white man with a beard in the sky. But most of the music that I enjoy, they do it with such passion, I know it doesn't really matter what they're calling God, because we're talking about the same thing."
• James suffered yet another injury during the making of the album when he hurt his back while trying to move an amp. He was bedridden for a few days while the band worked on music and eventually had to get surgery to repair a herniated disc. While he was recuperating, he wrote even more songs, enough for another whole album: The Waterfall II.