Songfacts®:

• This heartrending song finds Arab Strap frontman Aidan Moffat outlining an unusual fantasy he had as a teenager. Rather than touring the country as a comedian making an audience laugh, why can't he be an anti-comedian, telling them sad stories to make them weep?
  
  I dreamed of touring the country
  Playing small gigs in intimate venues
  Sitting on stage in a leather wingback armchair
  And telling tales of woe
  The audience would join me in a long collective cry
  
  Moffat explained the background of the song to Uncut magazine: "When I was growing up in the '80s there was all this alternative comedy and I used to think as a teenager, 'Why don't people just sit around and cry together?' That's how Tears On Tour came about. My mum was a bit of a hippie as well, so maybe I've took that notion a little further than normal. In a sense, that's kind of what I ended up doing with my life."
• Throughout the song, Moffat recounts real-life instances when he started weeping.
  
  When my mother called long distance
  To say her mother passed away
  I blubbered on the bus, I couldn't hide
  
  Back in 2003, Arab Strap was touring America supporting Bright Eyes. "I think it was six weeks of tour and on the third day my mum phoned to tell me my grandmother had died," Moffat recalled to Stereogum. "I didn't go back, she told me to stay where I was."
  
  I cry at rom-coms, dramedies
  The news and children's films
  The Muppet Movie, Frozen, Frozen 2
  
  Moffat said the children's films' lyric is true. "My son is 13 this year and I've got a daughter who's seven so I watch these things and I just can't cope with them sometimes."
• Arab Strap recorded the song for As Days Get Dark, their first album in 16 years. The band released it on March 5, 2021.