Songfacts®:

• This emotional ballad about losing the love of your life to another man closes James Bay's Electric Light record. He said:
  
  "'Slide' was the last song written for the new album and it felt like a natural closer. Although it's tone is sad and heavy, it's essentially about connection - a theme which, with hindsight, this album is really hinged on - and hope, despite the fact it doesn't always work out. I guess it goes back to the nature of why I love songwriting - because a song promises the possibility of connection with other people - so we chase those flashes of creativity even when they sometimes lead us astray."
• The outro to "Slide" features a reading of one of James Bay's favorite Allen Ginsberg's poems, "Song" which begins with, "…the weight of the world is love." It is read by musician David Ryan Harris who Bay brought with him during his spring 2018 tour. The singer told Q magazine:
  
  "We just found the excerpt and it felt like a really moving thing to do, just to push the boundaries a little further. But we couldn't use the original recording, so I had to ask a friend of mine to do it."