Songfacts®:

• This loud and bruising track originated from a soundcheck jam just before a gig in Dusseldorf, Germany, when McCartney was checking his guitar. Macca liked the soaring riff he came up with and recorded it with his band for his 2018 album Egypt Station. That didn't work out, but after some tweaks it ended up on McCartney III two years later.
• The former Beatle recorded McCartney III during the COVID lockdown. He played all the instruments on the album apart from on this song, where Rusty Anderson and Abe Laboriel Jr., both longtime members of his touring band, add guitars and drums. Their contribution is a leftover from their playing on the Egypt Station version of "Slidin." Egypt Station producer co-producer Greg Kurstin also gets a credit for the same reason.
• I'm slidin', glidin' through the air
  I can see my body through windows in my hair
  I'm slidin', glidin' through the air
  
  McCartney's recording of Egypt Station coincided with the 2018 South Korea Winter Olympics; as he listened to the coverage he was struck by the announcer's use of the word "slidin'." McCartney explained to NME: "They kept saying the word 'sliding,' when they meant Snowboarding or Skiing or Tobogganing anything with slides, I just thought that's a great, nice name for all of those, a group name for all of that so I then started thinking of snowboarders and skiers and that became the song 'Slidin'.'"
• Paul McCartney premiered the song's music video on June 20, 2021, International Surfing Day. Jack McCoy directed the clip which features footage of professional surfer Craig Anderson in association with Surfrider Foundation.
• Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien remixed the song for McCartney III Imagined, a re-worked version of McCartney III. O'Brien told BBC Radio 6 Music's Nemone that with the help of producer Paul Epworth, he ramped up the intensity with The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" as his reference point.