The song was first teased via Twitter on March 10, 2021, with the song title “Slow Clap” appearing on a cassette tape:

With this new single, Slow Clap, which was written a while, like in quarantine. It was a second song I wrote with Ross Golan and Luke Niccoli, right after Reintroduce Myself. I don’t know if you can hear it, but they’re like from the same world. When you’re working for a while, you get to go and play in these sandboxes, and Ross Golan, like who are you? He’s so talented and because I have, I’ve had all these different genres that I’m bouncing in I don’t even know where I need to be or what someone would want from me or what do I wanna be, where am I? He was like ”I woke up at 5:44am and I had this crazy idea and I sang it into my phone, then I went back to sleep and it was this idea titled Slow Clap.” And I was like you’re the weirdest guy ever. And he was like ”It’s kinda like all those movies from 80’s where you get like clap back to life.” Like yes, you’re not the underdog! You’re an awesome person! I feel like that’s the thing that happens to us, it starts in high school or actually in elementary school where you feel like you don’t fit in and sometimes your weirdness or like don’t fitinness is what makes you so special. The song is kind of about that and it’s also about wanting to just… even though I know I had my fifteen minutes in my time, wanting to kinda double dip and like just get a little bit more, why not. If they’re gonna let me, I’m gonna take it!

– Gwen Stefani via Beats 1 on Apple Music