Songfacts®:

• Alternative rock band Jack's Mannequin's third studio album, People and Things is considered by frontman Andrew McMahon to be a "relationship record." He explained: "My goal with many of the songs was to strip away the flowery language and sentiment attached to newer love and replace it with starker, less blinded language about more binding love. In the time following the last Jack's album the people in my world were moving in together, getting married, trying to find 'real jobs' and reconciling new lives that looked a lot less like youth than some of us cared for."
• It was this song which led to the theme running throughout the record. Said McMahon: "Marriage is a bit of a beast to tackle in a pop record but when I wrote 'My Racing Thoughts,' it became clear how powerful and loaded a subject this kind of love is and somewhere in that moment I began to lock into the broad concept for the writing sessions to come." The song was released as a single on August 2, 2011.