Vocalist Olly Alexander wrote the song's lyric at two different stages in his life. He explained to Digital Spy: "It's about being in a relationship with someone and how that can feel really intoxicating, but that can be really addictive and you can feel like a king. You know it has to end and you feel it's going bad, but you don't feel strong enough to end it yourself. You want the other person to end it. That's what I felt like I was going through over the period of a year, and then towards the end, I wrote the song."
The music video finds Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander and his bandmates being pushed around by some invisible dancers. The clip was directed by Nadia (1975's "Settle Down") and choreographed by Ryan Heffington (Sia's "Chandelier," and "Elastic Heart"). "Ryan got in touch a while ago to say he was a fan of our music, I'd been an admirer of his work so we met up and we instantly hit it off," Alexander explained. "As a band we've always wanted to use choreography in a video - something that was a bit more unusual and I knew Ryan would be the guy to work with." "The initial idea came from the meaning of the song, feeling controlled by somebody and wanting them to let you go," he added.
This was the third UK chart-topper with "king" in its title, following Roger Miller's "King Of The Road" in 1965 and Wamdue Project's "King Of My Castle" in 1999.
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