Songfacts®:

• "A Poem On The Men's Room Wall" opens with some eyebrow-raising lines garnered from bathroom stall graffiti:
  
  Fear is the mind killer
  Beer is the fear killer
  This beer is killer
  Phyllis Diller Is a cock thriller
  
  From there, Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, ponders his role as an artist and questions the nature of songwriting itself. Can a vulgar rhyme hold the same weight as his more polished work? He even worried it might be a career misstep.
  
  Despite his doubts, Houck ultimately trusted his gut and included the song on his album Revelator. The Phosphorescent mainman strategically placed it near the end, before the closing track.
  
  "I know it's jarring," he told Uncut magazine. "But I realized they're just songs. They're supposed to be joyous and funny and moving. You can do whatever you want in a song. It's poignantly beautiful and crude and hilarious, and I can't think of any other thing that encapsulates all those feelings."
• The song's inspiration came from a peculiar encounter. Years ago, Houck frequented a club in Atlanta called The Earl, a venue that supported him in his early days. One night, he stumbled upon a piece of graffiti in the men's room - a collaborative poem scrawled on the wall. Each line was written by a different person, creating a hilarious and unexpected sequence.
  
  "For whatever reason, I felt it was hilarious," he told Uncut magazine. "It's been percolating in my mind for 20 years now and I thought, 'That's a song. It's so clearly a song.' But if you want to get down to brass tacks, that's the song that was prompting that feeling of, 'What the f--k is this thing?'"
• Matthew Houck produced Revelator in his own Nashville studio, crafting the album over a six-month period. This introspective work delves into the "unspoken truths" that often accompany domestic life. It explores the complexities of home, relationships, and family, lifting the veil on the darker emotions that can simmer beneath the surface of a seemingly idyllic life.