Songfacts®:

• Vocalist Dexter Holland finished the song's lyrics in April 2020, a month or two before the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality kicked off. But, this still reflects the conversation of social unrest that took place in America over the summer of 2020. Holland told Apple Music: "It wasn't like I predicted it or anything, but there was a sense that this stuff was bubbling. It was ready to spill over. People are oppressed, and they're feeling it, and they're striking out."
• Though Holland wrote the song through American eyes, he told American Songwriter he wanted to address what is happening worldwide. "We're seeing a lot of social unrest in Hong Kong, in Europe, Russia, Belarus," the frontman said. "I would call it anti-democratic forces going on right now, and I think it's worth writing about."
• The song is the opening track of Let The Bad Times Roll. The Offspring's 10th album finds the South California rockers questioning the state of the world in the early 2020s in two ways:
  
  1) Politically (this song and "Let The Bad Times Roll").
  
  2) Regarding opioid addiction and mental health issues ("The Opioid Diaries").
  
  Said Holland: "Let The Bad Times Roll, we're writing about the world that we are living in and what we're seeing around us."
• The Offspring released "This Is Not Utopia" as the fourth single from Let The Bad Times Roll on July 7, 2021, accompanied by a Samuel Bayer-directed music video.