Songfacts®:

• This song finds a vulnerable Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker grappling with a stormy relationship
  
  We're on the borderline
  Caught between the tides of pain and rapture
  Possibly a sign
  I'm gonna have the strangest night on Sunday
  
  The relationship has bought to the surface feelings of self-doubt. Parker asks:
  
  Will I be known and loved?
  Is there one that I trust?
  Starting to sober up
  Has it been long enough?
  
  Parker told The New York Times that he typically needs to feel down on himself before he's ready to come up with material for Tame Impala. "Part of the thing about me starting an album is that I have to feel kind of worthless again to want to make music. I started making music when I was a kid as a way of feeling better about myself," Parker said. "The ironic thing is, if I'm feeling on top of the world or feeling confident or like everything's good, I don't have the urge to make music."
• Tame Impala debuted "Borderline" when they performed on the March 30, 2019 episode of Saturday Night Live. Just one problem: Kevin Parker had yet to write the lyrics. "I was up until 6 in the morning trying to finish the song and just didn't," he confessed to Zane Lowe on Apple Music. "So to this day, the SNL version of 'Borderline' is literally me mumbling gibberish."
  
  Parker laughed as he explained the situation to Lowe: "You know how artists do that thing in the studio before they have lyrics, just sing whatever comes out? I did that on SNL. That's how fried I was at the time. I just didn't care."
  
  Between working on the song, juggling the upcoming The Slow Rush album, and prepping for Coachella, Parker said it somehow didn't even seem strange to go on national television with unfinished lyrics. "It felt normal to me to just sing nonsense," he admitted. "I tell people that story and they don't believe me, until I show the YouTube clip."
• Months after debuting "Borderline" on Saturday Night Live, Parker was still working on the song. Ahead of the release of The Slow Rush, he still hadn't finished the track to his satisfaction.
  
  "Honestly, I believe that I kind of just ran out of time making it," Parker told Triple J's Lucy Smith. "I was so in my own head about the song. The way I describe it, is the way it sounds now is the way I was hearing it when I released it the first time. For me, the drums sounded just heaps more hard-hitting. There were just things that I could hear in the song that I didn't realize no one else could."
• Kevin Parker almost got busted by the Saturday Night Live crew when he made up the words to the song for his performance. Musical guests are required to submit lyrics to the songs they will perform so the show can make sure they're suitable for broadcast. Tame Impala's tour manager made some up and submitted those. At rehearsal, the crew noticed Parker wasn't singing those words, but they let it let it slide - it's not like Tame Impala is Rage Against The Machine. In fact, they're kind of the opposite.