Songfacts®:

• This heartbreak anthem find Danielle Haim and her sisters singing about wanting a second chance with an ex:
  
  I was too proud to say I was wrong
  (Said you'd always see me through)
  All that time is gone, no more fearing control
  I'm ready for the both of us now
  
  The Haim girls wish to fix the shattered relationship.
• The song is one of several on Something To Tell You where Danielle Haim sings of regret and recrimination. When Rolling Stone asked her what experiences such lyrics draw upon, she replied that their connection to actual relationships of hers isn't always direct, and that she is "a little uncomfortable" discussing her personal life publicly.
  
  "If I'm feeling some type of way and we start to write," Danielle added, "I don't fully understand my feelings until the song's done and out in the world. That's how it was with the last album. I think I'm gonna start to figure out what a lot of these new songs mean in two months, or something."
• Haim took to the Saturday Night Live stage on May 13, 2016 to perform both this song and another Something To Tell You track, "Little Of Your Love."
• The video was shot by Jake Schreie, who has also worked with Chance the Rapper and Cashmere Cat. The director is best known for helming the 2015 film adaptation of John Green's novel Paper Towns.
  
  The clip was filmed at dawn as one continuous shot at Sherman Oaks, California, where the Haim sisters grew up. The visual finds Este, Danielle and Alana joyfully grooving down the streets of their hometown.
• Haim's original concept for the clip featured them driving down Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles, pulling off car stunts. However, they were forced to go back to the drawing board after it proved too dangerous.
  
  "We wanted it to be on Ventura Boulevard because that's where we're from, and some of our favorite videos took place in and around there like 'Free Fallin'' from Tom Petty," Danielle Haim told MTV News correspondent Gaby Wilson. "It's literally where we ended up recording our video, that corner."
  
  "After a week of being like, 'So, that didn't work,' [we thought] 'What is a safer thing we could do?'" Alana Haim continued, "We could walk!"
• The original version of the song was a lot slower. According to Este Haim it was "more like a chill acoustic guitar kind of thing."
  
  Danielle Haim explained to Pitchfork: "We had it in that place for a long time, and [finally] we were like, 'Something is not working with this song.' So we went to the classic, go-to producer [questions]: 'Is the key right? Is the tempo right?' After months of working on it, we were like, 'OK, let's try this 30 BPMs faster.'"
• "Want You Back" was co-produced by Ariel Rechtshaid, who frequently collaborates with Haim, and with Jim-E Stack, who earned his first major credit for his work on the track. Jim-E Stack's role on "Want You Back" opened doors to high-profile collaborations with artists like Bon Iver, Lorde, and Charli XCX.
  
  Stack remained friendly with the Haim sisters, and in 2022 he invited Danielle Haim to join his sessions with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. This led to Danielle featuring on two tracks on Bon Iver's Sable, Fable album: "I'll Be There" and "If Only I Could Wait," which Stack produced.