Songfacts®:

• "Taking Me Back" is a witty rocker where Jack White considers different meanings of the titular phrase.
  
  He's been killed in a video game so has to start again.
  
  When you take out the figures
  And when you pull all the triggers
  Well, you're taking me back
  
  White recalls happy pre-pandemic memories of picnics.
  
  When you listen to mystics
  As you lay at your picnics
  You're taking me back
  
  He's reconciled with his lover after a fight.
  
  When you forgive the friction
  And you talk about Christmas
  Are you taking me back
  
  White also rhymes "taking me back" with "taking it black," and "breaking my back," linking to morning coffee and being down on the floor.
  
• Jack White's first new solo material since his 2018 album Boarding House Reach, he released "Taking Me Back" on October 18, 2021 as the lead single from Fear of the Dawn. He previously previewed it in a trailer for the video game Call of Duty: Vanguard.
• Recorded at White's Third Man Studios in Nashville during the COVID pandemic, White produced the track himself and handled every instrument.
• Fear of the Dawn features White's traditional rock sound, while a second album, Entering Heaven Alive, is a more mellow, folky collection of songs. Two versions of "Taking Me Back" bookend the pair of records. As a searing rocker, it begins Fear Of The Dawn. As a becalmed, bluegrass-esque number titled "Taking Me Back Gently," it ends Entering Heaven Alive.
  
  The Sun suggested that White established the many possibilities offered by a single song. "You have nailed it on the head," he said. "That's exactly what the different versions of 'Taking Me Back' are all about. It just shows you can take any song and deliver it in a flamenco style or a samba or a bossa nova or a polka."
• White shot the self-directed performance video of "Taking Me Back" during his private tour rehearsals in The Blue Room at Third Man Records.
• White likes the interplay of the two interpretations of "Taking Me Back." "The song is the same, but it's just not what you're saying," he told Mojo magazine. "It's how you're displaying it."
• Jack White performed "Taking Me Back" as a medley with "Fear Of The Dawn" on the February 25, 2023 episode of Saturday Night Live. He also played "A Tip From You To Me." White's appearance was the fifth time he'd been the musical performer on the sketch show.