Songfacts®:

• This song finds War On Drugs leader Adam Granduciel free-associating lyrics about various random memories.
• Granduciel sets the scene using a Bob Dylan lyric to describe a state of desolation.
  
  I was lying in my bed
  A creature void of form
  
  He borrowed Dylan's expression "a creature void of form" from the Blood On The Tracks track, "Shelter From the Storm."
  
  "It's such a fantastic way to describe somebody who feels nothing," Granduciel told UK newspaper The Sun. "Somebody who is emotionally in turmoil and broken down... as if he's been out in the woods too long."
• In the second verse, Granduciel namechecks another Dylan song, "Desolation Row," when he sings:
  
  Like when we went to see Bob Dylan
  We danced to 'Desolation Row'
  But I don't live here anymore
  But I got no place to go
  
  At first Granduciel considered these throwaway lyrics. It was only later, listening back, that he thought about all the times he really had seen Bob Dylan. "Those are real memories," he said. "Why throw them away because I make references to my favorite songwriter?"
• Once Granduciel finished "I Don't Live Here Anymore," he realized its title could fit the mood of the album as a whole. He told The Independent he "liked the affirmation of it. It felt like something."
• Inspired by becoming a father, I Don't Live Here Anymore is a record about Granduciel trying to navigate his way through life's many changes and seizing control of his destiny. The album's title, he said, refers to a non-literal, emotional place. "If you say 'I don't live here anymore' it means you're still standing where you're saying you're not," Granduciel pointed out. "It's almost like you know where you don't want to be. You know exactly what you're not, but that doesn't mean you know where you're going."
• The song features backing vocals by the New York band Lucius. They are the only other artist that contributes to I Don't Live Here Anymore.
• Granduciel co-produced the song with Shawn Everett (The Killers, Cold War Kids). The War On Drugs frontman told Apple Music they aimed for an '80s vibe. "At one point Shawn and I ran everything on the song - drums, the girls, bass, everything - through a JC-120 Roland amplifier, which is like the sound of the '80s, essentially," he said. "We spent like a day doing that, and it just gave it this sound that was a familiar heartbeat or something."