Speaking with New York Magazine, Perry explained that the song originated during a series of gigs in Detroit when he found himself in a hotel room unable to sleep, staring out of the window. ("Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard / Their shadows searching in the night / Streetlights people, living just to find emotion / Hiding, somewhere in the night").
"I was digging the idea of how the lights were facing down, so that you couldn't see anything," he recalled. "All of a sudden I'd see people walking out of the dark, and into the light. And the term 'streetlight people' came to me. So Detroit was very much in my consciousness when we started writing."

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