Songfacts®:

• This song was added to the 11:59 album at the very last minute, just three weeks before the album was released, validating the appropriateness of the album's title. "We literally called the record manufacturing plant and had them stop pressing the record because we had just written 'Start A Fire,'" Star told Alternative Addiction. "I haven't been excited about a song like that in a long time, I knew it had to be on the album, so I jumped on a plane and flew out to LA and recorded the song with Howard Benson."
  
  He added: "I always heard these stories that people would write these songs at the last minute, and I never thought that would happen to me. I knew the record was done and being made, and sure enough I end up writing 'Start A Fire' at the last second."
• When we interviewed songwriter and producer, Ido Zmishlany, he recalled co-writing "Start a Fire" with Ryan Star. Zmishlany reminisced about the all-nighter they pulled in order to finish the tune in time for Star's record label meeting the next day. "He left my apartment around 8 a.m. and went straight to the label meeting with an mp3 of this song that we had just done," he said. "Sure enough, the label said, 'Yup. We like it. Go!'"