Songfacts®:

• Lead singer/lyricist Tyson Wheeler says this song is about "enjoying the last sweet second instead of looking at the last bitter moment. Counting down in a pleasant way, if that's possible."
  
  He adds that they named the song after the famous painting because they thought it was "our perfect work of art, our Mona Lisa. Our perfect, simple song."
• This song, along with the rest of When The World Comes Down, was recorded at Barefoot Studios in Hollywood, home base for producer Eric Valentine (Queens Of The Stone Age, Smash Mouth).
• Guitarist Nick Wheeler told Ultimate-Guitar.com that it was him who came up with the bulk of this song. He explained: "That song for a long time was just me strumming a guitar and Tyson (Ritter) singing."
  Wheeler added in the publicity materials for When the World Comes Down that when they got back to the rest of the band and started jamming it, "there's something not quite right. It sounded like alt country southern rock but the chord changes were too quick. Then, completely frustrated, we played it for Eric and he says, 'what's wrong with the demo? Just play it like that.' And it worked and we decided to track it live and now we love it."
• The album title When the World Comes Down comes from a lyric in this song.
• Kennert told AceShowbiz about the CD's cover, which show's the band's logo on fire. The guitarist explained that the artwork reflected the same sentiment as this song. He added: "We loved the idea of building a real sculpture and having the cover being a real photograph, not some Photoshop creation. This beautiful vibrant reflection of our band, but at the same time it's sort of depicting a destruction of us. We just thought it offered a great image."