Songfacts®:

• Cage The Elephant come from the town of Bowling Green in Kentucky, which is best known for manufacturing Chevrolet Corvettes. An alternative rock group, they formed in 2005 by frontman Matt Shultz and his guitarist brother Brad. They were joined by their friends Daniel Titchenor (bass), Lincoln Parish (guitar) and Jared Champion (drums).
  
  They relocated to London in 2007 when they got a record deal with a British label, which released "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" in the UK as their first single. It climbed to #32 in the summer of 2008, when their self-titled debut album was also issued in the UK. They spent the next few months touring the UK and promoting the song, including a breakthrough performance on Later... with Jools Holland that October. In 2009 they got a deal with the American label Jive Records, which released their album there. The band moved back to America and started a new round of promotion. In the US, "Ain't No Rest For the Wicked" peaked at #83 in November 2009, long after it was issued in the UK.
• The phrase "no rest for the wicked" originates in the Bible, specifically from the Book of Isaiah, which reads: "there is no peace... for the wicked."
  
  Cage The Elephant Matt Shultz told USA Today how he heard the phrase while working for a construction company: "One of my co-workers was a drug dealer (on the side) and always talked about wanting to quit that business. I asked him why he didn't and he said, 'There's no rest for the wicked.'"
• Matt Shultz wrote the verses from his imagination, telling the stories of three different sinners: a prostitute, a robber, and a preacher who stole from his congregation. The "sin" theme ties into the biblical reference in the title. Matt's bandmates gave it a distinctive sing-along rhythm and a blues feel.
• Lincoln Parish, Cage The Elephant's guitarist until 2013, first got into slide guitar when the band wrote this tune. He explained to Orange Amps that the song "was a bouncy thing that kind of suited slide. I played in regular tuning on that but I also play in open tuning. I first put the slide on my little finger but then found I could do a lot more by putting it on my ring finger."
• When Matt Shultz penned this song, he was working a construction job and he wrote some of the lyrics in a wall on some drywall while he originally wrote the chorus on a paper plate. He recalled to Spinner UK in a 2011 interview: "When I was working construction I got in trouble for going to the side and writing lyrics so I had to get creative and do it real sneakily like writing on the drywall and on paper plates and stuff. And at the end of the day, I'd go back and write down everything I'd written."
  
  "Somewhere in Bowling Green, those lyrics are written behind someone's toilet," he added.
• The song can be heard on the car radio during the beginning of the January 25, 2016 pilot episode of Fox's Lucifer when the title character is stopped by the cop. It plays again at the end of the episode, when Lucifer leaves his bar and visits his therapist girlfriend.