Songfacts®:

• The Vaccines recorded "Alone Star" for Back in Love City, an album loosely based around the concept of feelings of every kind running dry. People can go to Love City to plug in and refill their dried-up emotions. Justin Young sings here of feeling alone but also realizing that's not true at all, and he's never really alone.
• Justin Young originally wrote the song for The Vaccines' third album, English Graffiti, after being told they didn't have any singles. Within a space of a few days, Young wrote "Alone Star," "Handsome," "Dream Lover," and "20/20." The latter three all ended up being released as singles, but they couldn't get "Alone Star" right and it didn't make the album. "It felt a bit ham-fisted and we wanted to try to create a bit more nuance around the arrangement, instrumentation, and production," he told Apple Music.
  
  They picked it up again for Combat Sports and, once more, couldn't get the sound right within the context of the record. The band tried it yet again for Back In Love City and very nearly dropped it for the third time, but with the help of co-producers Daniel Ledinsky and Fryars, they finally got to a place where they fell in love with the song.
• The Vaccines wrote "Alone Star" with Beck's engineer, Cole Marsden Greif-Neill. The American producer and songwriter contributed to six of the tracks on Back In Love City.