Songfacts®:

• In Fiona Apple's "Paper Bag," when a guy tells her it's all in her head, she says, "so is everything," but he doesn't get it.
  
  In this gentle piano ballad from the Australian group Middle Kids, lead singer Hannah Joy grapples with this same concept, wondering if that panicked feeling is all in her head or if it's real. She's described it as a very personal song, and the opening lines set the scene:
  
  Sydney 2011
  I fell in love with my best friend
  
  By the time she released this song, Joy was married to her bandmate Tim Fitz, whom she met in 2014.
• "All In My Head" was written years earlier and was considered for the 2021 Middle Kids album Today We're The Greatest, but they weren't happy with the arrangement. They revisited it for their 2024 album Faith Crisis Pt 1 and got some key input from Jonathan Gilmore, who produced the track. In a Songfacts interview with Middle Kids bass player Tim Fitz, he told the story:
  
  "It started as a kind of thrash '90s rock song. In the studio, Jon suggested we try it as a piano ballad, because it's such a vulnerable song lyrically. It didn't work, so when we got home, we tried again on our little piano and it clicked."
• The song is a duet with Dave Le'aupepe from another Sydney-based band, Gang Of Youths. He takes the second verse, which puts a very different spin on the song from what Hannah Joy intended, but pulled it all together. Le'aupepe is good friends with Tim Fitz, who asked him to sing on the track.
  
  "Our friend Dave sang on it and took it to a beautiful place," Fitz told Songfacts. "We didn't know whether it would work with two singers, but it was magic."
• The song is part of the third Middle Kids album, Faith Crisis Pt 1. They came up with the album title after listening through to the songs and realizing that many of them had to do with turning points in Hannah Joy's life, various crisis events.