Songfacts®:

• "60 & Punk" is about a nameless teenage hero of Ben Gibbard's who became a friend and mentor to the Death Cab for Cutie frontman in adulthood. Both a lament and a love letter, the piano ballad is a study of the changing nature of friendship as Gibbard witnesses his pal's battle with alcohol addiction.
  
  "It was very sad to see them in that condition, but also beautifully humanizing," Gibbard explained to The Independent. "We tend to think of our idols as kind of superheroes; maybe less so today, given that people have a tendency to overshare on social media, but when I was growing up, all you knew about these people was what they allowed you to see – which was them doing superhuman things, up on stage in an arena with all these people going crazy. None of that removes the shackles of humanity. It doesn't ward off addiction or mental illness. I wanted to document the series of interactions that brought me to that realization."