Songfacts®:

• This song's hook was inspired by The Cars' track "Drive." Guitarist Alex Robertshaw explained to The Line Of Best Fit: "We just loved the feeling of that track and wanted to play on that, and that's kind of where we ended up with the chorus for 'Armourland.' We weren't going for a big pop chorus or anything but just liked the sound of that record."
• The song is based on something Everything Everything "jokily wrote" during their Man Alive sessions. Bassist Jeremy Pritchard told The Line of Best Fit: "It had this sadness, which we loved. And we used to sing it to each other with jokey, puerile lyrics all the time but the tune has this melancholy to it. We didn't want it to be sugary. We wanted it to have that Cars essence to it, a sad sheen."
  Vocalist Jonathan Higgs added: "I wanted the general lyrics to counter-act the chorus and to be very unromantic. And, yet, it is a love song."
• The lyrics were inspired by the 2011 riots, which Higgs saw from the homeless hostel his girlfriend worked in. He told NME: "It's about being with the one you love in a world that's falling to bits."