Songfacts®:

• The Foals band members grew up in Oxford and played their early gigs in the university city. They moved down to Brighton on the south coast at the tail end of 2006 as drummer Jack Beaven's girlfriend was a student there. However, high rents forced them home a few months later.
  
  This song details how Foals' time in Brighton was a formative experience for the young group. It gave them their first taste of independence and the opportunity to fine tune their act at house parties and houses off the Lewes Road. "It was a place where coming from Oxford, you would come here at that age when you're like 18, 19," Philippakis told Apple Music 1's Matt Wilkinson. "You're starting to find your feet as an adult. We were partying a lot. There was an exuberant, hedonistic, hip vibe in Brighton at the time, particularly with music cultures. Lots of good bands. It was a good scene, basically. 2001 for me, it's a song that is set in that era. It's a song of being transported back into being that age, and it takes place here."
• Lost in the sugar rush
  Violet sky
  Beachside candy cane
  Blue tongues in summer rain
  Oh my God!
  Brighton rock!
  
  Having got their first taste of independence, temptation surrounded the band. The references to "sugar rush," "beachside candy" and "Brighton rock" are symbols for illicit substances and seaside hedonism.
• Philippakis wrote the lyrics in the depths of the pandemic winter when he had an escapist desire to break out from the feeling of being cooped up. "I was thinking about the frustration that people were feeling in lockdown," he told Apple Music. "It made me think about being a teenager and feeling frustrated when you are cooped up and you don't have autonomy - and how the cure for that is to run away to the seaside and have a wild weekend."
• It's unclear why Foals named this "2001." The title doesn't appear in the lyrics and the song takes place five years later.
• AK Paul (Jessie Ware, Sam Smith) and John Hill (Cage the Elephant, Shakira) produced "2001." Paul also played the bass and wrote the chorus bass.
• Foals re-recorded the song with the London Contemporary Orchestra in the summer of 2022. The band also recorded the tracks '"Life Is Yours" and "Wash Off" as part of their Apple Music Home Session.
  
  Foals previously worked with the LXO on 2013 album Holy Fire, so it was a reunion of sorts. They sent the tracks to the LCO's co-artistic director and co-principal director Hugh Brunt, who transcribed and translated their ideas onto different instruments.