Songfacts®:

• "Until The Wheels Fall Off" draws inspiration from a letter penned by Sophie Ellis-Bextor's late stepfather John Leach to her mother. Leach passed away from lung cancer in July 2020.
  
  "He had basically written how he wanted his memorial to go and he chose all the songs," Ellis-Bextor told The Sun, "and about the way he beat cancer by still living life to the full. They still had magical times together, they did trips, they drank fine wines, they lit all those fancy candles. So I thought it was a really good idea for how to live. You can't wait for things to tell you that this is the right moment. You have to seize what's in front of you."
• Yeah, we'll laugh and love until the wheels fall off
  The days they all fly by
  At a lightning speed
  
  "Until the Wheels Fall Off" includes lyrics taken from the letter. "He'd written about how they hadn't let his diagnoses stop anything, and they'd drunk the best wines and they'd burned all the fancy candles and they'd traveled," Ellis-Bextor told The Independent, "and he wrote, 'And we laughed and loved until the wheels fell off, and it all flew by at lightning speed.'"
• This is the third track of Sophie Ellis-Bextor's seventh studio album, Hana (it means blossom in Japanese). In early 2020, the singer visited Japan with her son and mother. Initially not slated to join the trip, she stepped in for her ailing stepdad. The journey held a poignant significance, tinged with sadness because of John's situation. Shortly after her return, COVID-19 lockdowns began to take effect.
  
  "In January 2020, I was getting ready to do this trip to Tokyo and we started writing songs that imagined Tokyo," Ellis-Bextor told The Sun. "And then within three weeks of getting back from Tokyo, we were, you know, in a whole new reality with a world tilting not being able to go anywhere. So I think that was a reason why it became such an intrinsic part of the record."
  
  She chose the name Hana "because there are themes of optimism, new beginnings, adventures and reflections."
• Sophie Ellis-Bextor wrote the song with her producer, Ed Harcourt. Hana is her third album produced by Harcourt, alongside Wanderlust (2014) and Familia (2016).