Songfacts®:

• This song finds 1975 singer Matty Healy spending four minutes frantically trying to locate his mind. "With that song I wanted to do The Replacements doing Dr Seuss… and after I stopped doing certain things, I felt a bit mad, but I kind of had a knowledge that I was going to be alright," he told When The Gramophone Rings. "Which is why there's a resignation to my madness in the opening lyric 'Well I think I've gone mad, isn't that so sad.'"
  
  "In the pre-production I got about four or five lines in before realizing that we'd have to cut it up and record it in bits" Healy added, "but then I had a bit of a psychedelic experience at FYF Festival, so the next day in the studio I was a broken man, I felt really on edge. That night I did the whole song twice, then that second take made it onto the record."
• This was borne out of the struggles that Matt Healy and his songwriting collaborator, 1975 drummer George Daniel, had with the burden of creating a follow-up to their debut album. "George and I are like brothers, we had never left each other's side," said Healy. "We complete each other. And my problems at that time separated us a little bit. It catalysed the troubles that he had and solidified all of the issues that I was having in return, and it became this really dark time. And born out of that was The Ballad of Me and My Brain."
• The song is revealing about Healy. "It's intense but it doesn't take itself too seriously," The 1975 frontman told NME. "It's quite funny at times. I think that sums me up quite well."