Songfacts®:

• Everything Everything's "The End of the Contender" tackles a certain confusion and misplaced anger that seems to permeate modern culture. The song was inspired by a real-life event: a viral video from the mid-2010s featuring Ronnie Pickering. Pickering was an older man filmed in a road rage incident, exhibiting strange aggression and a sense of self-importance. He repeatedly asks "'Do you know who I am? I'm Ronnie Pickering."
  
  "It's pretty amusing, but more than that, I found that he represented a type of impotent anger that lots of men around his age of displayed in recent years," Everything Everything frontman Jonathan Higgs told The Sun. "I think some people have found themselves rejected by modern society, and our told they really aren't wanted any more. Some make changes, some get angry. I don't want to mock the guy – I find it somewhat tragic. Ronnie Pickering used to be an amateur boxer and no doubt there was a time when people did know who I am. But that time has passed and he is just raging and we're watching this video and chuckling."
• "The End Of The Contender" is a synth-laden track where Higgs flaunts his falsetto and staccato vocals, all while synths, rhythms, and guitar melodies create an electrifying swirl in the background. It was produced by Everything Everything guitarist Alex Robertshaw and Tom A.D. Fuller under their alias Kaines & Tom AD.
• Kit Monteith directed the moody video where the band members broodingly amble along the beach.
• Everything Everything laid down Mountainhead at Eve Studios and Decoy Studios. The record paints a chilling portrait of a dystopian society where the underclass labors tirelessly to prop up the elite who reside at the pinnacle.
  
  "In another world, society has built an immense mountain," elaborated Higgs. "To make the mountain bigger, they must make the hole they live in deeper and deeper. All of society is built around the creation of the mountain, and a mountain religion dominates all thought. At the top of the mountain is rumored to be a huge mirror that reflects endlessly recurring images of the self, and at the bottom of the pit is a giant golden snake that is the primal fear of all believers."
• The term "Mountainhead" signifies those who blindly champion the mountain's growth regardless of the consequences or the suffering of those in the depths. They believe the higher the mountain, the deeper the pit must be.