Songfacts®:

• This song finds Phillips ready to take on a world that seems to be at a tipping point. "I was thinking about humans and how brave they can be under the most impossible circumstances," she said in her Songfacts interview. "Our civilization feels fragile right now, like we are on the high wire without a net."
• The song is driven by a percussive soundscape created by Jay Bellerose, a Los Angeles-based session drummer who also played on the Grammy-winning albums Don't Give Up On Me (Solomon Burke) and Raising Sand (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss).
• Phillips spent much of 2016 composing music for the Netflix TV series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. At the end of the year, she issued the mini-album Human Contact Is Never Easy, which she recorded with many of the same musicians. "World On Sticks" is one of four new songs included on the set.