Songfacts®:

• Lewis Capaldi originally co-wrote this song for his debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent, but decided it wasn't right for him. After hearing Sigala's remix of his hit single "Someone You Loved," he sent his "Lasting Lover" demo to the DJ.
  
  Sigala received the demo in September 2019. "It came to me as a ballad, just like an acoustic song with just guitar and his voice on it," he told Hits Radio. He completely reinvented the track, revamping it into a bright summery floorfiller.
• Sigala and Capaldi handpicked James Arthur to be the singer. Arthur added his vocals via Zoom because of lockdown restrictions and didn't actually meet the DJ until they filmed the video.
• Arthur knew that his friend Corey Saunders had co-written the song but was unaware at first of Capaldi's involvement. "I got the song from Sigala and the vocal on it was kind of a similar vibe to me," he recalled to Hits Radio. "It didn't sound like Lewis. He must've done that vocal years ago. It sounded a bit like me, to be honest. And then I was like, 'Yeah, this suits me.'"
• The song opens with a sample of MGMT's 2007 track "Time To Pretend." At first Sigala didn't know the sample was from MGMT's track. He recalled to OfficialCharts.com: "I played it on keys and it fitted over the track perfectly, and I loved it lots - but I had no idea where the inspiration had come from."
  
  Sigala rang a friend from his studio and sung the tune down the phone as they tried to work out what it was. Once he realized it was "Time To Pretend," it was straightforward to get the sample cleared by MGMT as they loved his version.
• Speaking with Radio.com's Julia, Sigala explained why he wanted to incorporate MGMT's "Time to Pretend" into the song. "It has kind of a positive twist, and the sample when I brought that into the equation it just makes it really happy and that's what I kind of try and do with all of my songs," he said.