Songfacts®:

• Following electro-pop duo Goldfrapp's departure from EMI, a fourteen-track career-spanning retrospective of their hits to date was released. The compilation included two new tracks, this piece of dreamy synth-pop and the new wave ballad "Melancholy Sky."
• The song's music video was shot on iPhone by Lisa Gunning in South America and chronicles the duo's travels on the road. Gunning is a film editor whose credits include Breaking and Entering and Nowhere Boy. She also directed Goldfrapp's 2010 single, "Believer." Alison Goldfrapp disclosed in a February 2010 interview with The Sunday Times that she was dating Gunning.
• The song serves as a tribute to Alison Goldfrapp's late mum. She explained to Interview Magazine: "The lyric for 'Yellow Halo' came to me when I was thinking about my mother. She died two summers ago, when I was on the Head First tour. I see the 'Yellow Halo' as a happy and positive force."