Songfacts®:

• Vocalist and guitarist Ellie Rowsell told Tonedeaf.com the story of this song. "'You're A Germ' started with a home demo. I wanted to make something loud and fun. I had this phrase in my head 'you're a germ' and I really liked it and based the song around that," she said.
  
  "It was recorded late and night and I lived with other people so I couldn't be loud so when I was trying to make the shouting parts I kind of had to shout really quietly and it came out really weird," Rowsell continued. "But it kind of gave it the vibe I wanted, like a Pixies vibe. It was angry but not typically loud- it's initially what I wanted it to have."
• Bassist Theo Ellis told Consequence of Sound the song has been a live favorite of the band for a long time. "It was the spark to some of our first mosh pits," he said, "and holds a solid place in our hearts as one of our older songs."
• A germ is a colloquial term for a micro-organism that causes disease, such as certain bacteria and viruses. They are parasites which live by invading living things. For many centuries the prevailing belief was that disease is spread by poisonous vapours called "miasmas", but in 1856 French chemist Louis Pasteur demonstrated that infection is carried by germs.
  
  At the Sorbonne Louis Pasteur once showed the audience lantern slides of different germs then he darkened the hall and fired a bright beam of light through the blackness exposing the specks of dust that sometimes carry such diseases as cholera and yellow fever. The audience went home much troubled. (Source The Encyclopedia of Trivia).
• The Chris Grieder directed video finds the band alone in a wooden cabin, being attacked by zombies and ace-wielding clowns. "We are big fans of horror movies, terrified of them no doubt, but massive fans all the same," Wolf Alice said. "We always buy one on the road to watch together on long drives - we have figured out who will die first in the zombie apocalypse that is undoubtedly gonna happen, Joff (Oddie, guitar) can do a brilliant Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre impression and it was only a matter of time before we made our own."