Songfacts®:

• "The Dreamer" is a heart-rending look at the ups and downs of love. Vaccines lead singer Justin Young pours his soul into this ballad about a love that's both passionate and troubled. He pledges devotion but admits things are messy. Dreams, however, become a sanctuary for the couple, a place where understanding blossoms.
• The song's title comes from a lyric in the song, which itself was inspired by a bit of a misremembered line from Don McLean's classic "American Pie." "The Dreamer" goes:
  
  I was managing your expectations
  On a pick-up full of pink carnations
  You were begging me to cure the sickness of a rose
  
  Young had thought a line in "American Pie" mentioned a "pick-up full of pink carnations," and while that image is undeniably charming, turns out it was actually "with a pink carnation and a pickup truck."
  
  This little mistake turned into a happy accident. "It took me a few months to realize I'd misremembered a lyric from Don McLean's American Pie which was funny because that song to me, always sounded like disillusionment, the death of innocence and the death of the American dream," Young told The Sun. "So, a phrase that started life not meaning that much at all came to mean everything with regards to the album."
• Andrew Wells produced the song along with the rest of Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations. Wells' resumé also includes collaborations with Halsey, Five Seconds of Summer and Phoebe Bridgers. Young said he loves this song's production because it appears very simple but "there's a lot that goes into making it sound that way."