Songfacts®:

• "Falling Out of Love" is a tender, aching reflection on a relationship that has quietly run its course. Julian Casablancas sings about the complicated relief of acceptance, finding a measure of peace (and even comfort in your own company) once you finally admit a love has expired.
• The title is quietly subversive. "Falling out of love" is usually framed as a loss, but Casablancas reframes it as a process of honest reckoning, something you fall into as much as out of.
• There's an unavoidable biographical shadow hanging over the song. Casablancas was married to Juliet Joslin for 14 years before the couple divorced in 2019. Juliet was part of The Strokes' management team during their relationship and directed their documentary In Transit. It's plausible that the song reaches back to a period long before the formal end of the marriage, when either Julian or Juliet may have been in denial about the slow deterioration of their relationship. Casablancas has rarely spoken explicitly about the divorce in interviews, but the emotional specificity of the lyric - the sense of having lingered somewhere he didn't fully belong - lends the song an unmistakably personal register.
• One of the track's most distinctive features is Casablancas's use of a vocoder, which gives his voice a processed, faintly robotic sheen that paradoxically makes the sentiment feel more raw. It's a familiar trick in his toolkit, turning up in his collaboration with Daft Punk on "Instant Crush," as well as on Strokes tracks like "At The Door" (2020), and "Going Shopping" (2026). The effect creates a useful buffer, as if he's reporting on feelings from a safe observational distance; emotions handled with tongs, just in case.
• "Falling Out of Love" was released as the second single from The Strokes' seventh album, Reality Awaits. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, marking the second consecutive Strokes album he has produced following The New Abnormal (2020). It was recorded in part in Costa Rica.
• An early, improvised version of the song surfaced publicly in May 2021 when The Strokes performed it during a virtual fundraiser for New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley. That loose, embryonic performance gave fans their first glimpse of the track, though it would be several years before the polished studio version arrived.
• The Strokes performed "Falling Out of Love" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on May 14, 2026. The single was released the day before.