Songfacts®:

• Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, Powfu is a singer-songwriter who specializes in melancholic, lo-fi hip-hop. This song finds him on his "death bed" addressing a lover as he reminisces on their time together.
• Powfu explained to Genius that despite the sad subject matter, he tried not to make it dark by incorporating happy memories and the hope of heaven. "Basically I'm just saying, I'm sorry that I'm leaving you because we're best friends and we rely on each other," he explained. "So I feel bad leaving her on earth by herself."
• Powfu is a fan of American author Nicholas Sparks. The movie adaptation of his 1996 romantic novel The Notebook served as an inspiration for this song.
  
  I been praying for forgiveness, you've been praying for my health
  When I leave this earth, hopin' you'll find someone else
  
  Powfu explained: "I was in the end of The Notebook, there's a scene where the older guy is dying, and so I was kind of thinking of that at the time. I was thinking of old age but in the song, it kind of sounds like I'm talking about like cancer or something like a more common sickness I guess. I was inspired by the old age part."
• The hook features a twist where it is Powfu's lover who is ailing. She is suffering with a headache, so he makes her a cup of coffee.
  
  Don't stay awake for too long, don't go to bed
  I'll make a cup of coffee for your head
  It'll get you up and going out of bed
• The hook samples "Coffee," a 2017 track by Filipino-British singer-songwriter beabadoobee. Powfu explained he came across a beat by a producer called Otterpop with "Coffee" on it and thought it sounded a great. A friend suggested that he sing and rap over the beat, so he gave it a go. "It actually started sounding pretty good, so I was like, I'll keep going with it," he explained. "So then I tried to write a rap for it. I listened to the hook and tried to make the lyrics go with the hook."
• Powfu first released "Death Bed" on February 9, 2019. It gained traction on both Soundcloud and YouTube, but was eventually taken down because of the artist using an unauthorized sample. After Powfu signed with Columbia, the label re-released the song on February 7, 2020 and it quickly became a worldwide hit.
• Powfu told Radio.com how beabadoobee's song gave him the idea for "Death Bed." "Whenever I write a rap to a sample, I listen to the lyrics of what they're saying in that sample and I try and, like, go off of it," he explained. "In the sample, she's talking about sleeping and making coffee for your head and stuff. And I wasn't really feeling, like, talking about actually sleeping... so I decided to go from the standpoint of somebody who's on their deathbed."