Songfacts®:

• "The Devil's in the Details" means the details of a matter are its most tricky, problematic aspect. Here, Jim James laments how we're being swept away by a river of technology and materialism.
  
  So, take me to the mall
  And wash me in the stream
  The devil's in the details, baby
  
  James is saying that by missing out on nature and not connecting with people we love, we're putting our entire existence in danger. "It's about the confusion and isolation that capitalism, greed, social media and television have woven into our lives - that so many people feel more at home online or at the shopping mall than out in nature or really connecting with people," he told Mojo magazine. "Almost everything evil that we encounter, such as war, is born of the Greed of the few who control everything and keep wanting more and more, and it's driving us and the planet closer and closer to destruction."
• My Morning Jacket recorded "The Devil's in the Details" for their 2021 self-titled album. The band recorded the album at 64 Sound in Los Angeles, with Jim James as producer and engineer.
• James penned the song's skeleton with an old Sears drum machine he bought for 10 bucks. "It has this really nice pulsating pattern," he told Apple Music. "I would play with it at night, sing over it, and then I put it in a demo box for things that I was going to work on later. I thought I would just do it by myself, because it didn't really seem like a band song."
• One night, while My Morning Jacket were making their eponymous album, the band went to a light show at the Arboretum in LA. "The whole time I was walking, 'The Devil's in the Details' kept coming into my head over and over," James recalled. "I was like, 'S--t, we need to do this tomorrow.'"
  
  The next day, James brought the drum machine to the session and they just let it go. "I showed them the chords, and we just all started improvising to the drum machine, getting hypnotized as we played along," he said.