Songfacts®:

• Rita Ora first met New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi in 2018. They became mates and their friendship gradually grew into something more romantic. The pair started dating in 2021 and got married the following year. This electro-tinged pop anthem is inspired by Ora's personal experience of feeling vulnerable at the very start of her romantic journey.
• The song opens and closes with voice memos from Taika Waititi. "I keep lots of voice notes and notes in general. Not just messages, but ideas - anything that make me feel happy and inspires me," Ora told Official Charts. "I was never worried about putting Taika on the track as he has the best sense of humour, and we laugh all day together. One of my favourite things about him, is his sense of humor. And he loved the idea. He is so, so creative and the most supportive person I have ever met. He makes me feel like everything I do is the best thing he has ever heard, and it really makes me feel so strong."
• Ora wrote the song with the Welsh songwriter Jon Maguire (Calum Scott's "You Are the Reason," Lucy Spraggan's "Stick The Kettle On") and Lewis Thompson, who is Joel Corry's regular production partner. Thompson also worked on the Becky Hill and David Guetta collaborations "Remember" and "Crazy What Love Can Do." The other songwriters are Corey Sanders, Elle Campbell, Phoebe Jasper and Rory Adams.
• Thompson co-produced the track with the Los Angeles-based Turkish-American producer Warren "Oak" Felder (Nicki Minaj's "Your Love," Alessia Cara's "Here," Demi Lovato's "Sorry Not Sorry").
• BMG signed Ora in February 2022. She released "You Only Love Me" on January 27, 2023 as her first new music under her new label.
• Charlie Sarsfield shot the music video, which depicts Rita Ora's disastrous (and fortunately fictional) wedding.
  
  It opens with video messages from various celeb well-wishers, such as Kristen Stewart, Lindsay Lohan, and Chelsea Handler, but then everything goes wrong. Not even cameo fairy godmother Sharon Stone can save the bride's big day.
  
  "It's very comedic and tongue in cheek," said Ora. "I'm a bit of a prankster and I do like to do things like that. I just thought it would be fun to play and have some fun, whilst wearing a GORGEOUS vintage YSL dress from 1987!"
• The original song dates back to before Rita Ora married Taika Waititi. "'You Only Love Me' was sent to me a long time ago," Ora told Official Charts. "My team reintroduced it to me...I actually sort of forgot about it! It's such a great song. But I needed to make it work, lyrically, to where I am today. It just felt really good, it had to be the first single. And we had it in the inbox the whole time! That's just how it goes sometimes."
• Rita Ora's lyrics for the song and the rest of You & I were influenced by her own journaling, which was something she'd never really done before. "Just jotting down ideas and notes. My sister's really good at it and she was always saying, 'Try it!,'" she told the Metro newspaper's 60 Seconds column.
  
  "So I started with words and emotions and feelings and thought eventually that those could be songs and I went into the studio, not really planning anything, and it turned out to be 'You Only Love Me', which was the first single and I thought, 'Well, let's just keep going', and we made an album."