Songfacts®:

• Following a disastrous concert on July 29, 2011, when a heavily intoxicated Caleb Followill was slurring incomprehensibly between songs and rambling on about nothing, the Kings Of Leon were forced to cancel the rest of the tour and Followill sought treatment for alcohol addiction. This track dissects the singer's issues with drink and fame. He told Q magazine:
  
  "That song is very personal, and to the people involved who know what that song's about, it's like 'Holy s--t'. But if you look back on stuff that's happened years ago, if it still means something you should write about it."
• Followill wrote the lyrics through the eyes of a paparazzi-hounded rock star hanging himself in the garden of his Los Angeles mansion. The Kings of Leon frontman admitted he was worried about writing "Over" in case it became a prophecy.
  
  "A lot of these songs I hold back what I say because sometimes it comes to pass, sometimes it happens," he told NME. "But the band told me, 'Say whatever you want to say, don't worry about what's going to happen in the future.'"
  
  "So 'Over' is a very dark song," he continued. "There's this beautiful tree in the backyard of this house we were renting and there were a lot of paparazzi involved; not really for me, it's more for my wife – she gets a lot of that. The paparazzi; it's all about that and the moment when you give it all up."
• Drummer Nathan Followill admitted to the BBC this is one of the hardest songs he's had ever to play. "Most of those parts are just me goofing off," he said, "and then I'm like, 'Oh crap, I'm going to have to play this every night for the next God knows how long.'"
• Despite the dark places where the song arrives, this was intended as a love song from Caleb to his supermodel wife Lily Aldridge. He told Q magazine: "A lot of the lyrics is directly between me and my wife and there are things that I say that when she heard it, she was like, 'Wow, you're just talking to me and no one else will know what you're saying.'"