Songfacts®:

• This electronic track deals with a man who is in a struggling relationship with a woman; the final verse finds him comparing her to plastic, as according to the guy, she's artificial and superficial.
• This was debuted live by New Order during their gig at the Chicago Aragon Ballroom on January 7, 2015.
• The song is a return to New Order's vintage sound with its electronic drums, psychedelic synths and new wave guitar hooks. Vocalist Bernard Sumner told Uncut: "'Plastic' is very new. We wanted a song to fit in the end of the set. That's how we tend to write songs – to fit in a place in the set. The song became angry though I wasn't."
• The song features La Roux's Elly Jackson on backing vocals
• Plastic is the name given to any of a wide range of stable synthetic materials, which are fluid in their manufacture and can be molded into solid objects of diverse shapes. Here are some plastic fun facts:
  
  The word 'plastic' comes from the Greek plastikos, meaning 'capable of being shaped and molded.
  
  The very first plastic was Parkesine, invented by Alexander Parkes in 1856. It cracked and was flammable, so was not a total success.
  
  The creation of Bakelite, the first commercially successful totally synthetic plastic, was announced by its inventor Leo Baekeland on February 5, 1909.
  
  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the name given to a collection of marine debris mostly comprising plastic in the North Pacific Ocean.
  
  Every piece of plastic ever made still exists.