This is the title track of Arctic Monkeys sixth studio album, which is set on a moon-based luxury resort. Frontman Alex Turner told Billboard he chose the fictional Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino name because, "That [phrase] seemed like the right name for this family of music." Tranquility Base is the spot on the moon where Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module and made "one small step for man and one giant for mankind."
Tranquility producer James Ford plays on this song the Vako Orchestron, a kind of mellotron-type instrument heavily used by Kraftwerk. The Vako Orchestron shows up on two other Tranquilty tracks "One Point Perspective" and "Four Out of Five."
Most of the Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino songs were written in 2016 by Alex Turner on a Steinway Vertegrand piano gifted to him as a birthday present by the band's manager Ian McAndrew. He told Mojo that writing songs on a piano this time around, rather than his usual guitar, led to enjoy a greater freedom both in sound and expression. "I've tricked myself into writing – by sitting at the piano, doing this thing that I haven't done before," Turner said. "That gave me permission to go somewhere I'd had trouble getting to before. It allowed me to put across how I feel more, more… broadly than before."
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