Songfacts®:

• St. Vincent evokes during this bittersweet song a relationship that is trapped in a slow dance and is going nowhere.
  
  I sway in place to a slow disco
  
  St. Vincent dances in the knowledge that it's time to leave "the pain of mistakes."
• Singer-songwriter Joy Williams, formerly of the folk duo Civil Wars, is credited as a co-writer. St. Vincent told Pitchfork the story of her contribution:
  
  "Years ago I was going to write a song for one of Joy's solo albums and I had this melody saved up in my iPhone. I had the line 'I'm so glad I came but I can't wait to leave,' and we kicked things around in a room for a little bit. We didn't finish it, and she didn't end up using it, but that line had really stuck with me - it's about how the life you're actually living and the life that you should be living are running parallel, and how one haunts the other. So I gutted the song and rewrote all the words. But I also wanted to be respectful of Joy's contribution to the start of it."
• St. Vincent told The Guardian how she took the song title from a Wendy Melvoin text message. She recalled:
  
  "Ages ago, I played in a Ted Talk house band with Wendy and Lisa from Prince and the Revolution. So I kept up a friendly text exchange with Wendy. I asked her how she was and what she was doing, and she said she was well and that they were working on an album of 'slow discos,' and I was like, 'and thank you.'"
• St. Vincent released an uptempo pop reworking of the song titled "Fast Slow Disco" on June 1, 2018. The singer knows Taylor Swift through MASSEDUCTION producer Jack Antonoff' (he worked with the megastar on her 1989 and Reputation albums) and it turns out it was Swift who inspired the revamped version of "Slow Disco."
  
  Speaking with Matt Wilkinson on his Beats 1 show, St. Vincent explained: "I swear to God, you know because Jack Antonoff's bros with Taylor Swift because they work together a lot, and I feel like Taylor was like, 'You should make this a pop song.'"
  
  She added: "I know that she wholeheartedly supported that idea and I think the genesis of the idea was her."
• The self-described "gay disco" video for "Fast Slow Disco" finds St. Vincent dancing the night away in a gay club. "I always felt this song could wear many different outfits and live many different lives," she said. "Here she is in disco pants, sweating on a New York dance floor."
• Having released the "Fast Slow Disco" rework, St. Vincent dropped yet another version in September 2018. This raw and stripped interpretation is titled "Slow Slow Disco" and yep, it's slower.
• Both "Slow Disco (Piano Version)" and "Fast Slow Disco" feature in season 4 of The Bear.
  
  "Slow Disco (Piano Version)" appears at the very beginning of episode 3 ("Scallop"), as Sydney prepares a scallop dish for Carmy late at night.
  
  "Fast Slow Disco" is used in episode 10 ("Goodbye"), playing as Uncle Jimmy's clock runs out and the season fades to black after Carmy's pivotal decision.