Songfacts®:

• Frontman Adam Granduciel told Q Magazine this anxiety-ridden tale of physical agony was inspired by an operation on his ruptured disc. It is one of several A Deeper Understanding tracks where he touches on the excruciating experience. "I couldn't sit to work and I couldn't stand up to play guitar," he said. "The idea of chronic pain and what it does to the mind is scattered throughout the songs."
• The song gave The War on Drugs their first #1 on any Billboard chart, when this rose 2-1 on the Adult Alternative Songs airplay tally dated January 20, 2018. The Philadelphia-based band's previously best had been the #3 that "Holding On" peaked at on the same listing in August 2017.
• Adam Granduciel expanded on the story behind this song during an interview with Uncut magazine: "I basically had a ruptured disc, but I didn't do anything about it for a year or so," he said. "I was in excruciating pain for months on end – it would be really hard for me to stand up for more than 10 minutes at a time."
  
  "It informed a lot of the imagery in that song because there's a line in there about having a broken back," he continued. "I was so consumed with this physical pain, it was all I could really think about. So I knew that that song was going to be about the journey of living with something that's keeping you from being who you want to be, or going where you want to go."
  
  Granduciel eventually had surgery to fix his back.
• In the cover photo of A Deeper Understanding, Granduciel is wearing a back brace under his denim jacket.