Songfacts®:

• This song features a string quartet called the Magik Magik orchestra. The San Francisco-based indie rock orchestra also play on the Codes and Keys title track and frontman Ben Gibbard told Q magazine he wasn't concerned about falling in the pomp rock trap of needlessly using a string ensemble. He said: "Using orchestras and choirs for the sake of it is when it sounds really bloated. Look at "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses. There's no need for an orchestra to be on that song. It doesn't serve the music or make it better."
• Jam! Music asked Gibbard how much of the love content on Codes and Keys was written about his new wife, actress and musician Zooey Deschanel? He replied: "There are moments on the new album - like 'Stay Young, Go Dancing' or the first verse of 'Monday Morning' - that are about my wife." Gibbard and Deschanel split up late in 2011 after two years of marriage.
• Codes and Keys concludes with this optimistic song, which ends with Gibbard singing, "I'm renewed, oh how I feel alive and through winter's advancing/We'll stay young go dancing." The singer told Spinner UK that he chose the tune to close the album because of its sunny content. "We realized that virtually every record we've ever made, with the exception of one or two, they've had very sombre, very dark, slow, bad endings," he said. "As much as I felt really self-conscious about the sentiment of that song because it's so light, I thought, 'Why not just put it at the end?'"
• After marrying Zooey Deschanel, Gibbard moved from Seattle to Los Angeles, a city he described as "the belly of the beast" on 2001's "Why You'd Want To Live Here." Gibbard's more cheery attitude is reflected in this song's line, "Life is sweet in the belly of the beast."
• The song's music video finds a couple in their seventies reminiscing about their relationship over the decades. "I liked the idea of moving backwards," Gibbard told Spinner. "In the beginning you see this couple who are in their 70s, and throughout the video they move through these corridors and become younger and younger and I think it's a rather touching way to show these two people.With all of these songs that I write, I want them to have as much universal appeal as possible and certainly don't feel like I want to undermine the complexity of the lyrics at times and make that happen."