Songfacts®:

• The song originated with a haunting melody that multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd had that came to a crescendo. Vocalist Wayne Coyne told MusicRadar.com: "We didn't have lyrics for it, but we knew that it was a big moment when it breaks into [sings] 'Tryyyyyy to explaaaaain!' When I heard it, I really tried to sing what I thought the music was saying. The nature of the song is shattered by this emotion.
  
  "I didn't dwell on it that much, but I think that people read into it as my life is like that," he added. "Elements are like that, but I think that's the same for everybody, where your mind is left tortured by something that's unanswerable. 'Try to explain, I don't think I understand' - and you never get an explanation. To me, that sounds like the way people think."
• Coyne described this to UK newspaper The Sun as the "sonic equivalent of Edvard Munch's The Scream."
• Wayne Coyne separated from Michelle, his partner of 25 years, in the summer of 2012. Mojo magazine asked the frontman if this song's theme of disillusionment with love was inspired by the breakdown of their relationship. He replied: "I know that that would sound like what's going on in my life, but it's not really. It's not a cry, the way some people do music to speak to someone. I know what that is. It's this mind that has been ripped wide open, thinking all this joy and all this good was gonna come in, and then it doesn't and then the mind is still saying, 'What?' It's searching for an answer."