Songfacts®:

• This single by Kid Cudi, from his Indicud album, was produced by the Cleveland rapper/singer himself. He explained: "Here's what I did. I took one of my favorite bands MGMT's song "Congratulatons", put it in reverse, sped it up, and produced over it."
  
  New York based dance punk act MGMT previously guested on Cudi's 2009 track "Pursuit Of Happiness."
• Cudi namechecks his breakthrough single in the second verse when he raps "It's the same old thing getting lost Day 'N' Nite young and lost in the pain."
• Cudi talks in the first verse about a moment when positive energy hit him "like lightning" through his veins. He told Billboard magazine how it "just hit me one day." "It was definitely something that just kind of popped up," he recalled. "I'm pretty sure it was a gradual transition over time and growth. When it came time to start making records and expressing myself, I was totally in a different mindset. And all the other stuff that I had done previously, I was in a state of… distress or depression or isolation, whatever it was. And that's how those songs came about. But this was a whole other thing for me. I can't recall a specific moment. It just happened one day when I was starting to write my songs. That's when I start to have my reflective moments. And then I was like, 'Wow, I really am in a different space.' I came up with that hook first. And then I'm like, 'Why did I come up with that hook? 'Immortal.' What am I saying here?" I have all these revelations as I'm writing. Each song is like a chapter of my diary."
• Cudi explained to Billboard why he chose to borrow from "Congratulations" for this song. "I'm not that big a fan of sampling," he said. "But I feel like if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it to where it's more of a reimagining of a track. The songs that I do utilize samples on, most of it you wouldn't even be able to tell what it was unless I told you. Like for 'Immortal,' most people wouldn't know that was 'Congratulations' unless I said anything. It's almost unrecognizable. It doesn't sound like I just chopped up a bunch of s--t. There were a lot of technical things that I went in there with my engineer and did where I filtered out the sample, took away the drums and turn up the melodies in the sample. I knew what I wanted. It was always an idea of mine to sample one of MGMT's songs. 'Congratulations' was perfect. I'm really happy that they cleared it. It's one of the songs that I had been waiting for people to hear."
• Cudi quotes line from the Adam Sandler movie Billy Madison at the beginning of this track. He explained to Billboard: "'I'm the smartest man alive!' resonated with me. And Adam Sandler is like a god to me. He's so amazing. I just wanted to pay homage through song and let him know, like, 'You're the s--t!'"