Jackson wrote "Uptight Downtown" loosely about the London riots of August 2011. "The recent Brixton riots had nowhere near as much positive impact as the ones in the '80s, which we were far more directed [at the police]", she told "NME" in June 2014. "I'm not making any political points here and I always want to stay away from politics, so that song is about the feeling of the riots—the energy in Brixton at the time—and the fact that I had never seen my generation in London stand up for anything before. Whether it was right or not to riot, or whether anything changed, is not for me to say, but I knew afterwards that I wanted to write a song called 'Uptight Downtown'."