Songfacts®:

• Some reviewers have interpreted this track as a reference to Paul McCartney's decision to split from his former wife Heather Mills and not to look back.
• Electric Arguments is a collaboration between McCartney and former member of Killing Joke, Martin "Youth" Glover. This was their third project together and the first one to officially reveal its creators' identities. In 1993 the duo released an ambient dance album, Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, "though the former Beatle's involvement was initially a secret. Their follow-up was another trance set, Rushes in 1998. This album was recorded over 13 separate days over a space of the year, with one track being put down each day. It was their first collection to feature prominent vocals. McCartney said to The Daily Telegraph October 10, 2008: "I like having a collaborator. Otherwise, I get the feeling of being an absent-minded professor alone in his laboratory all day. I did the first solo McCartney record all on my own. It seemed a bit lonely. There's a track on there that's about 10 minutes long. Try playing maracas for 10 minutes in a row on your own. I was standing in the room thinking, 'That's it - I've really lost the plot.' So, after that, I thought it was probably nice to have someone in the room with me."
• The vocals on Electric Arguments were improvised on the spot by McCartney. He told Mojo magazine December 2008: "Youth would say, 'What about a vocal, man?' So we'd go to poetry books and find a phrase, y'know, like William Burroughs would do his cut-ups. So I'd just find a little phrase, like 'silent lovers', and suddenly it was a chorus."
• The new album features more traditional songwriting, including classic rock and acoustic tracks, "yet is in keeping with the genre-hopping spirit of the first two the Fireman albums," according to a statement.
• In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, McCartney expanded on how he improvised this song by borrowing phrases from poetry books: "What I was looking for was not to steal an idea as much as to find beautiful words. I remember just seeing the words 'silent lovers' - to me, that's a couple of kids in love, you can make a movie about that - and I thought, 'That's good, I can sing about that.' So I pulled that onto my pad at the mike and then went delving into another book - so as not to be plagiarizing someone else's poem - and then came upon 'angels smiling,' which is kind of nice... they're not frowned upon, there's something beautiful going down, and then the final phrase: 'Don't stop running' - which is my advice to you, kids. Just let it flow. Groove on. I don't mean running away from something. Keep on going! And these three phrases were the basis of the song."