Songfacts®:

• This was released as the second single from Nate Ruess' Grand Romantic album. "It's three or four songs rolled into one, and in my mind, the perfect opening track for the whole album (the same way 'Some Nights' was written as the album opener)," he said. "In fact, I always saw it as 'Some Nights' evil twin when I first started writing it a few years ago. I'd say more - but I'd rather save it for the album and let the song get you ready for it."
• The song finds Ruess struggling with the pain of a bad relationship but concludes on an optimistic note by quoting the album title:
  
  I found songs among the tragic
  Hung my hat on sadness
  But mom, I think I'm ready to free this grand romantic in me
  
  Ruess told MTV News; "I think at some point in my life I had my heart broken so many times that I was just willing to never get too up and never get too down."
  
  "I think that the album is very romantic, but not in some sort of overt buying-flowers-for-someone type of way," he added. "I like to just think that romantic is the ability to feel the highs of falling in love, being in love - just the appreciation of wonderful things that happen. And then also acknowledging the low moments and being willing to go there."
• Nate Ruess sings here:
  
  It's for the best you didn't listen
  It's for the best we get our distance
  
  He previously used the same lyric on the fun. track "Some Nights." Asked during a Reddit AMA if there is some personal significance to the couplet, or whether it is more of an artistic call back, Ruess replied: "It's a little bit of both. Coincidentally, it was my favorite lyric on the album. And so I figured I'd carry it over."
• The song features some multi-tracked laughter. Ruess explained to Rolling Stone: "I was on tour with fun., and I think 'Some Nights' was pretty big at the time in the States. I was laying in my bunk, and somehow I started hearing this laughing. I thought it would be interesting to freestyle over the laughing."
  
  "A lot of the stuff I'm singing on the song is from the first take and off the top of my head," he continued. "Not only melodically, but lyrically. I went into the studio by myself and recorded the laughing. I did eight different voices of me laughing, and then just started singing over it."