Songfacts®:

• This synth-heavy lament about letting go was released as the first single from Phoenix's Bankrupt album. "I'd rather be alone," frontman Thomas Mars sings in a high-register at the end of the hook. The track was premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show on February 18, 2013. During an on-air interview, Mars called the premiere "exciting," adding, "This is as connected as we can be."
• When Phoenix were writing the song they were thinking of Korea, so the band knew that they wanted to do something about South and North Korea in the video. Guitarist Laurent Brancowitz told MTV News: "We talked with Patrick Daughters, the video's director, and he told us about the K-Dramas, the soap operas of Korea; his mother is a big fan, so he knew them very well. And so we know we could put all the themes into something more entertaining and pop and Warhol-esque. We didn't want it to be ironic; we just wanted to use this particular form of poetry."
• The song uses an Asian riff to explore the idea of the massive rallies held in North Korea. "Imagine one individual that is a part of those huge choreographies with over 30,000 participants... and the sadness and melancholy of the fake smile," Brancowitz told Radio.com. "That was the idea that we were trying to transcribe."
• Asked by Radio.com whether the song is political statement, Brancowitz simply noted with a smile: "It's not all political, but everything poetic equals political."
• Asked by NME if he knew immediately this would be Bankrupt's lead single, Thomas Mars replied: "It kept coming back and we kept rejecting it. It was either too familiar, too distant or too intrusive. After spending about a year with it, we managed to see it from a different angle and it became something very different."