James Bay’s new song “Wild Love” is the first taste of what’s to come from the follow-up to his debut album Chaos and the Calm, and he sat down with Billboard as part of the “How It Went Down” video series to explain what inspired the track, both sonically and emotionally.

The British singer-songwriter reveals that after spending so much time with his debut LP, he was excited to reinvent himself. “I’d been making music, I’d been traveling around the world, I’d been touring all of my first record and that all had its sound. I’d been that person, I’d been that version of myself,” he says. “The most exciting thing about getting off the road and getting back into the studio -- particularly when I got to writing ‘Wild Love’ -- is I got to really dive head-first into new sounds and be a new version of myself.”

Bay shares that he felt himself evolve as an artist during the process of writing “Wild Love,” while drawing inspiration from artists including Frank Ocean and Prince. The song, which was one of the first he wrote for the new record, was influenced by the fact that he had been touring for five years, forcing him to be away from someone at home he had been with for many years.

The song, he says, is about “falling madly and deeply for somebody” and feeling the “fire” of falling in love again and again. “When I got home after all that time, traveling around the world, seeing all those people, playing all those massive shows, I got to get back to that person at home and I got to feel that euphoria all over again,” he adds. “So it just felt incredible to be back in the company of that one special person.”

Check out the video above to hear the full story of how James Bay wrote “Wild Love," and you can watch the newly released video for the track starring Stranger Things' Natalia Dyer here.