Songfacts®:

• The Vaccines consider themselves a Pop band in a Rock format, and their second album finds them 'coming of age.' Frontman Justin Young explained to NME how this song fits in with the rest of the disc: "Because there's a lyrical and emotional cohesion I think we felt free for there to not be so much sonic cohesion," he said. "It's important for us not to sound the same across the record, but I guess what 'All In Vain' does have in common is that it's a simple pop song."
• Young explained The Vaccines Come of Age album title to Q magazine: "It's very tongue-in-cheek, it's a joke," he said. "In the same way the first one was a joke too. I like having the name in the titles because it sounds classic, Meet The Beatles, More From The Monkees, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Also it is a lyric from one of the singles ('No Hope'), but lyrically it's actually: 'It's hard to come of age,' so if you're going to take it seriously you need to think of it in that context, as a human being and not as a singer in a band. But purely taken as The Vaccines Come of Age, that's supposed to disarming."