Songfacts®:

• This song is about the bitter sweetness of unrequited love. It recounts that all-too familiar tale of a love triangle where the girl that Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker is pining for has got involved with another guy called Trevor.
• According to Kevin Parker, the song "shouldn't be on a Tame Impala album because it has this dorky, white disco funk."
• Shot by the Spanish directors Canada (Justice, Phoenix, Scissor Sisters), the video is a technicolor trip. It has the high school star basketball player in love with the pretty cheerleader. However it flips the generic school love triangle by having the girl hooked up with the team's gorilla mascot, who is naturally called "Trevor."
  
  Spanish actress Laia Manzanares plays the cheerleader in the clip. She is also known for playing the role of Ukrainian student Oksana Casanoves in the Spanish television series Merlí.
• Parker originally intended to give the song to Mark Ronson for his Uptown Special album - before reconsidering. The Tame Impala frontman got his chance to inform Ronson of his change of plan when he was in America recording with the producer. However, he kept putting off telling him, until finally mustering up the strength.
  
  Parker told GQ Australia that Ronson responded, "Oh yeah, dude, I was going to say this song is yours. I feel like I've stolen your hard drive!"
  
  The Anglo-American producer was thinking the same thing, anyway.
  
• The song was Tame Impala's biggest hit of the 2010s, with over 450 million streams on Spotify. "The idea of me making anything that's experienced 400 million times would be terrifying if it wasn't music," Parker commented to The Sun.
• Listeners of Australian radio station Triple J cast a total of 1.8 million votes in a poll for the most popular songs of the 2010s, and "The Less I Know the Better" came out on top. Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" came in at #2 and Arctic Monkeys' "Do I Wanna Know?" at #3.
• Released in February 2025, Dutch DJ Mau P's remix of "The Less I Know the Better" climbed to #1 on Billboard's Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart three months later. Kevin Parker had twice previously reached the chart's summit as a writer on the 2024 Dua Lipa smashes "Houdini" and "Illusion."
• Parker wrote the original demo in just 15–30 minutes one night. It started as 30 seconds of music that he "fell in love with."
  
  Parker considers the final section of "The Less I Know the Better" his favorite and most emotionally satisfying part, describing the track as ultimately "a lesson in waiting," since giving the song the time it needed justified how long it took to finish.
• Nearly everything musically audible on the track was played on a Roland guitar synth. Parker chose it because it let him instantly access strings, horns, and countless other sounds while racing to capture the idea before forgetting it.
• Parker used a Korg Kronos keyboard (a staple on every Tame Impala album since Currents) alongside an old Roland JV-1080 synth module, gear choices shaped partly by limited money and access to equipment while living in Perth.