Tear It Down

Spoon frontman Britt Daniel wrote the lyric after taking in seeming endless reports of violence. In the song, he imagines himself in an owl cafe in Tokyo (where they do indeed have live owls), a city he visited that inspired some of the Hot Thoughts album, when a bomb goes off in a nearby park, killing someone - possibly his soulmate - he will now never meet.

The wall metaphor came from Donald Trump's rhetoric - at the time, he was running for president of the United States, promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico if elected. Britt Daniel wasn't worried about the political statement, but was concerned that the reference would soon be dated. "My real concern was that by the time the record came out, Trump would be a forgotten s--t stain of the past and it would be outdated," he told Esquire.