Night Shift

The song is about the aftermath of a breakup. Lucy Dacus told NPR: "This is the only breakup song I've ever written. For a long time I didn't believe expressing this sort of negativity was productive, but it's less productive to resist the truth of a situation. It's a hopeful song."

Dacus explained to HMV.com how this song erupted out of her after stirring inside her mind: "'Night Shift' came to be after many months of confusion and contemplation, like my subconscious had been working at full speed in order to find words for how I was feeling, and once my brain put it together, I had to spit it out. It reminded me of writing 'I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore' because it appeared fully baked. The recorded arrangement doesn't differ much from our first try."

In a 2018 interview with The Fader, Dacus said she made a deliberate choice to open her sophomore album, Historian, with this song because she knew her audience would be able to connect with it. "A breakup song is so immediately relatable," she said. "A first genuine heartbreak is a look into reimagining what your life is going to look like. If you accommodate somebody else and you think they're going to be part of your life and then they're not, you have to reform. The rest of the album has that reforming quality - having the rug pulled out from underneath you, and coming back."