Songfacts®:

• "Black Friday" is a self-deprecating ballad about Tom Odell's insecurities and his desire to be perfect like his girlfriend's friend. He loves his girl but keeps second-guessing his place in their relationship.
• It's Black Friday, we're in a black taxi
  You take my hand and hold it gently on the middle seat
  It's all in my head, it's all in my mind
  I'm so selfish, you're so kind
  It's all in my head, baby, I can't breathe
  I look in the mirror, what is happening to me?
  
  Odell describes a moment of intense self-doubt in the "Black Friday" chorus. The taxi represents the safety of his girlfriend's presence, but he is still struggling to cope with his own insecurities. The color black is a metaphor for his mindset. Odell feels like he is suffocating in his own mind, and he can't understand why he is so hard on himself.
• Tom Odell co-wrote the somber acoustic ballad in 2022, just a day before the actual Black Friday, alongside Laurie Blundell and Max Clilverd. Though it was his birthday, Odell wasn't in a festive mood. Feeling emotionally drained, the song emerged as an introspective reckoning with the weight he was carrying at the time.
  
  London-based pianist and composer Laurie Blundell co-wrote most of the tracks on Odell's 2021 Monsters and 2022 Best Day of My Life albums.
  
  Max Clilverd is a session musician and songwriter who works regularly with Odell.
• Odell and Blundell co-produced the track with Blundell's producer partner, Alex Gould (son of Level 42 founder member Phil Gould).
• "Black Friday" went viral on TikTok as fans turned its lyrics into a backdrop for clips about their own insecurities and struggles with self-doubt. The song's most-quoted line, "I want a better body, I want better skin. I wanna be perfect like all your other friends," features in the Netflix teen drama Heartstopper, underscoring a heartbreaking scene in which a character enters an eating disorder clinic.
  
  Tom Odell told the BBC that the response to the song left him stunned. "When I wrote that song, I was really, really miserable," he said. "I'm a vulnerable person and it's hard to be alive sometimes. Then fast forward to a year later, and I'm singing that song on stage and all these people are singing back these words and going, 'We feel the same way.' It's the most connected I've ever felt to an audience."
• On July 19, 2024, Belgian producer Lost Frequencies dropped a remix of "Black Friday" titled "Black Friday (Pretty Like the Sun)." The remix charted throughout Europe.