Songfacts®:

• Many of the tracks on Lights are bleak tales of love gone bad, but on this song English singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding finally gets her man. "It's quite uplifting," she explained to Spinner UK. "It's about wanting to run to someone, and this time the guy wants the same thing, and wanted me, which is quite rare. Some people think the salt skin in the title is from tears, but it's actually about sweating. If you go to the gym or out for a run, you get salty skin from sweating. So Salt Skin is just a sign that I've been running, which is my favourite thing to do, and in this case, running toward someone special."
• Goulding explained to 4music why this is her favorite track from Lights: "Salt Skin is really vibey and it was the last track that I did for the album and I really enjoyed making that one. When we started making the song, we thought 'this isn't going to be very good' and then all of a sudden I went in and they'd done something with it and I was like, wow!"