Songfacts®:

• The title track and first single from MGMT's Little Dark Age album, the song was released on October 17, 2017. "We felt like we had reached a flow, it was the sort of chemistry, the kind of magic feeling we had when we started the band," the duo explained to Zane Lowe on his Beats 1 radio show.
• Keyboardist Ben Goldwasser told Lowe the band was dancing around to the track in the recording studio when they finished making it, adding "It feels good to make music that's fun."
• The electro-goth track's cryptic lyrics appear to be chronicling some sort of apocalyptic doom.
  
  If you get out of bed
  And find me standing all alone
  Open-eyed
  Burn the page
  My little dark age
• The tripped-out gothic music video, directed by David MacNutt and Nathaniel Axel, takes the track's medieval title literally as the MGMT duo get stalked by the figure of Death.
• "Little Dark Age" was used in multitudes of TikTok videos amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It has since been used to soundtrack clips on a range of social issues, including trans rights, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the Black Lives Matter movement. The MGMT pair are not on the video-sharing site personally, so were unaware of its virality until it began getting millions of views.
  
  "That was enlightening in that none of the conscious stuff we did to promote that album mattered as much as this random thing that got picked up on TikTok," Benjamin Goldwasser told Record Collector magazine. "I think in a way that freed us up a little bit on this record to just focus on the music. Don't worry about the other stuff and whatever happens, happens."
  
  "I don't even know what a big TikTok song is or what that means," he added.
• The UK Conservative Party used "Little Dark Age" in a 2024 General Election advert. A slowed down version of the song plays over footage of the UK's Armed Forces while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak discusses the importance of defending the UK amid significant geopolitical tensions.
  
  MGMT hit back at the Tories for using their song, telling NME: "How many times do we have to remind you jokers that this song is NOT fair game for your utter garbage? Let's all laugh at this dingus. Clock's ticking, mate."
  
  The Conservatives were sent packing in the election as the Labour party secured a landslide victory.