On an Interview with i-D, Carly explains the Interpolate of the song from the 1980 Popeye’s movie:

The boys who I was writing it with, CJ Baran and Ben Romans, even though we’re all writers and musicians in our own right, we all share a common theme: we’re all total musical theatre nerds. So we got into this conversation about how cool it would be if we could reinvent some of these songs from musicals into a way that people could digest it in pop culture. We fell upon the creepy beauty and simplicity of the hook from He Needs Me and tried to funk it up.

According to The Guardian, after Carly was told that Disney (who owned the Popeye soundtrack rights) would never license the song, she took things into her own hands:

[Carly] drove to Disneyland with a fake contract for Mickey Mouse, got the mouse to sign it, then sent a photo to her record label who got onto Disney and pushed it through.