Songfacts®:

• "Joke About Divorce" centers on Blossoms frontman Tom Ogden's disastrous attempt to defuse a marital argument. The kind of ill-timed quip that works about as well as throwing a lit match into a petrol station.
• The title tells the whole story. Ogden once tried to break the tension during a fight with his wife, Katie, the sister of Blossoms drummer Joe Donovan, by joking about divorce. "I tried to defuse something with tension and it didn't work," Ogden told the BBC. "We've all been there to some extent, haven't we?"
  
  Rather than wallow in the awkwardness, Ogden turned his mistake into a track. "I learned from it and also wrote a song... when you're a songwriter that's what you do, isn't it?" he explained.
• Written collectively by the band, "Joke About Divorce" was recorded live to tape at Tilehouse Studios with producer (and video game composer) Shawn Lee.
• Pop icon Rick Astley, a friend of the group who dropped by the studio just to hang out, ended up contributing backing vocals to the track's outro and appearing in the video.
• Ogden directed and edited the music video, transforming the domestic dispute into a theatrical, pink-washed spectacle filmed at CHADS Theatre in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport.
• The track is the lead single and opener for Blossoms' sixth album, Songs From The Wedding Cake. The album title refers to Stockport Town Hall, whose white, tiered architecture earned it the local nickname "the Wedding Cake." It is also where Ogden got married. So an album named after the frontman's wedding venue opens with a song about the comic fragility of marriage. Somewhere, a wedding planner is taking notes.