Songfacts®:

• This song was co-written by Adam Anderson and Theo Hutchcraft of the duo Hurts, marking the first time The Courteeners collaborated with another artist.
  
  "We've know them for over 10 years and have a pretty good friendship," frontman Liam Fray told NME. "They sent our producer a song, and they didn't like it. It was very 'them' – a bit '80s but full on. But I was like 'f---in' hell, I love this track.'"
  
  "I spoke to them about it and they were like 'do you what you want with it, really'," he continued. "So I got my grubby mits on it, changed the lyrics, we put some lead guitar lines in there and luckily they loved it and said 'let's go'. I'd love to work with them again. We're always talking so who knows?"
• The video was filmed by The Courteeners' regular director Joe Connor. Fray told NME: "He's done our last seven or eight videos and I just think he's amazing. We chatted about it but it's nice to not be in it."
• Theo Hutchcraft told NME the story of the song:
  
  "We always write all sorts of different types of music really. We've got shelves of music that we pitch and save. With 'Modern Love', we had a day in the studio and we wanted to try and write a song that sounded a bit like The Strokes, a bit like Pulp, a bit like those bands that we love. We did that one, and it was a song that we could never really do justice. It was a song with a purpose, and we just sort of sat on it for a while, and we thought, 'look, we both loved it so much at the time' and we were always a bit sad that it couldn't really fit on one of our records.
  
  Then Joe Cross, who is the Courteeners' bassist and producer, he heard it and he absolutely loved it. Then Liam and I went and got very very drunk one night and he climbed on a skip, and sung it for me. He serenaded me from on top of a skip and I instantly just knew that it was perfect. I was almost like 'it's your song, it's not really my song anymore. You can do whatever you want with it because that's what it was intended for'.
  
  We had a very heated and close heart-to-heart discussion sat next to a skip and we decided that would be it. He changed the words and they made it their own and they pretty much brought it to life. I don't even really identify with it as my song really, it's their song. I've seen them play it live and it's just a magical moment, really. So it was a great thing to be part of, I'm really proud of it."