Songfacts®:

• Mystery Jets singer Blaine Harrison has spent the majority of his life relying on the National Health Service due to suffering from Spina Bifida. He told BBC News this song is shaped by the "frustrations and fears" about the future of the NHS.
  
  "In the post-austerity era of cuts, one of the communities that have felt the most is the disabled community," said the vocalist.
• The song's release coincides with the 71st anniversary of the National Health Service. "I was taken ill and had to spend an extended period of time in hospital, which is a fairly regular occurrence for me due to my disability," Harrison told BBC News. "I didn't have an instrument with me in the hospital so I was really just writing lyrics. It [Hospital Radio] is a compound of several different failed songs which I ended up stitching together.
  
  "The lyrics are, compared with some of our stuff, quite freeform and stream of consciousness," he added. "It could be construed as angry or pointed, but that's down to interpretation and I like to not to give too much away."
• Many UK hospitals have their own radio stations staffed by volunteers. Programs are produced specifically for the inpatients; their role in providing a window to the outside world has been found lift their mood and aid recovery.
  
  The song's title was inspired by the survival of hospital radio stations in the age of austerity. "Whenever I've been in hospital, I've always tuned into the radio stations," Harrison told NME. "Music is the ultimate medicine we have and in a way, it can lift you out of whatever predicament you're in. Nowhere is that needed as much as in hospital and often I've tuned in late at night."
  
  "Even if you might be the only person listening, it really feels like that voice is talking to you," he continued. "It's a voice coming down the line and I think in the age that we're living in, the information age, where we can find our music and our news, it's astounding that they have survived under austerity."
  
  Harrison concluded: "That's why I chose the title of the song, hospital radio feels like it should have been the first thing to go in the age of cuts."
• Blaine Harrison explained to Apple Music that the lyrics are more freeform than Mystery Jets usually do, as he and his father Henry (his former bandmate) were "trying to communicate the feeling of being sedated." Harrison added that he hoped to "evoke the feeling of artificial bliss - this slightly nonsensical stream of consciousness."