Songfacts®:

• I don't really have friends
  Don't go out on weekends
  I don't have a lover left to hold
  Friday night, I'm alone, sat at the piano
  
  When Freya Ridings received her first Platinum disc for "Lost Without You" in 2019, it should have been an exciting time for her, but it coincided with a breakup, leaving her feeling alone and isolated. Despite appearing to have a large support system, Ridings' dedication to her music caused her to miss important events, leaving her feeling disconnected from those closest to her.
• Ridings wrote "Weekends" after sitting alone in a bar in King's Cross with nobody to call. "I'd chosen to put the energy into my career, and you miss so many birthdays, people just stop inviting you because they don't think you're around," she explained. "It looks as though I had thousands of people around me, but actually I was the most alone I've ever been. So that song felt like me being scarily honest with myself, which was hard."
• "Weekends" started as a voice memo on Ridings' phone. Throughout the pandemic, the singer engaged with her fans through weekly Instagram live streams where she debuted new material, ultimately leading to fan input in selecting songs for her Blood Orange album. This was one of the songs they helped her choose. Ridings released it as the lead single on January 12, 2023.
• Freya Ridings co-wrote the pop ballad with the song's producer, Steve Mac. He provides the perfect sonic complement to Ridings' melancholic and sparse lyrics by infusing them with shimmering, danceable production.
  
  Steve Mac is a highly successful British music producer, songwriter, and musician who has been active in the industry since the 1990s. Mac has written and produced numerous hit singles for UK acts, including "Shape Of You" by Ed Sheeran, "Woman Like Me" by Little Mix, and "Rockabye" by Clean Bandit. He has also collaborated with international artists such as Pink, BTS, Shakira and Westlife.
• After whispering the refrain into her iPhone, it stayed there for a year until Ridings got into the studio with Steve Mac.
  
  The producer asked Ridings what she's said to herself recently that especially scared her. "It was a different question to the one I thought he was going to ask," she recalled to Official Charts. "I showed him the voice memo, I was actually really embarrassed, but he was... that's so sad. We can turn that into something."
• "Weekends" was the first single released from Blood Orange. The album narrates Ridings' journey through her painful breakup from her folk singer boyfriend Ewan J Phillips in January 2020. It covers her heartbreak, insecurities, and uncertainties due to the possibility of never meeting again. Yet, like most rom-coms, her tale has a happy ending: Freya and Ewan reconnected 18 months later, got engaged during the pandemic, and married in November 2022.
  
  "It's an album of two halves, 18 months of me being really heartbroken and alone and then 18 months of being the happiest I've ever been," said Ridings. "So it's those two halves, the bitter and the sweet, and the transition from one to the other, and allowing yourself to go through that."
• Ewan J Phillips produced or co-produced three Blood Orange tracks.
• Why Blood Orange? "I had a dream about a blood orange tree," Ridings explained to The Sun, "and when I woke up I was like, this is the fruit of the dark times in the soil and the growth that I've been trying to do."