Songfacts®:

• "The Last Good Day Of The Year" was the first single from Cousteau, who were led by Davey Ray Moor (who wrote the song) and Liam McKahey. In a Songfacts interview with Davey Ray Moor, he explained the song's meaning: "This is about an intense nostalgia for the present moment. We all get those instances where time seems to slow down for an arrested present before speeding away again. These are the tiny pearls that form on the string of memories we recall as our story. They say that life is lived in prose and remembered in poetry: these lyrics are daubs of memory rescued from a particularly poignant day. The singer rails against time and passing, aware something sublime (or frightening) was shared with, though also slipping away from, both he and the person the song addresses.
  
  Liam McKahey stepped into this song by delivering it in that creamy-smooth soul tone of his, and he made this song his own. It's a different sound to his textured baritone; he has a wild range of intensity choices as a performer."
• Davey Ray Moor played the trumpet on this song, giving it a distinctive, evocative feel. His playing was effective, but he's certainly no Louis Armstrong. "The trumpet riff was the first thing I ever wrote on the trumpet," he told Songfacts. "The 'how to play the trumpet' book was on the table as I learned the notes. I was always a big fan of 'Summer's Almost Gone' by The Doors, and that haunting sense of transition always got to me. The moment we recorded this song we realised we'd found the map to where we wanted to go, and Cousteau's ride started here."
• This song got some airplay on adult alternative radio stations, and the band performed it on Jools Holland and Craig Kilborn's shows. The band earned many favorable reviews, but was never widely popular. They split in 2005 after their third album but returned in 2016, this time with their named changed to CousteauX (with a silent X) to appease the Jacques Cousteau Society.
• The song was used in commercials for Nissan where the car goes into a freeze and is photographed at intersections.