After the intense joy of “Ya Love,” we get the closing thesis and title track of Butterfly 3000: a loving ending to the band’s happiest and most optimistic album, and a tribute to Stu’s newly born daughter, Araminta. The song builds a strong atmosphere using heavy reverb and echo, and lyrically features Stu listing a range of hopes for the future: from plain happiness, to overcoming ‘the system’, and gaining agency through embracing femininity.

Recounting the pandemic and the birth of his daughter to Stereogum, Stu said, “During the pandemic I’ve had times of productivity, but then also just extreme discontent — like, ‘What’s the point in doing anything?’ There’s just less stimulus input into the brain, which I think is bad for creativity, at least for me. The less I do, the more I find it hard to create stuff. So my daughter has been a nice arrow to point through this whole crazy time, and something to just reorient any negativity.”
That negativity surrounding Stu was whittled away and out of that transformation came the idea for Butterfly 3000.
In an interview with The Guardian, he said: “It made me reflect on how primitively, viscerally beautiful it is to be human. You have a kid, and suddenly you can’t just be cynical any more. You have to be a force for good,” while later saying to NME, “I definitely felt like I was in a cocoon before Minty was born. A butterfly is just a beautifully easy, metaphorical creature with this bizarre and interesting life cycle. That was the central motif for the whole record. And we tried to use it in every song.”
Araminta (nicknamed Minty) would become the focus of the title track for the album, where Stu puts all his hopes for her into one track. When asked if the lyrics of “Butterfly 3000” were the most honest he ever sang in that same interview, he said yes: “Yeah, it’s just an honest dialogue, or monologue… I guess, thematically, ‘Ya Love’ is like, ‘I’m going through this change and I’m the butterfly,’ and ‘Butterfly 3000’ is kind of like ‘It’s time for my daughter to be a butterfly and spread her wings and be free.’ That’s why there is that anxiety attached to the lyrics, because that sentiment is kind of scary. But ultimately, it’s still pretty exciting. And I think it wraps the record up in the way it was meant to.”
The song’s melody can be heard at the beginning of “Ya Love.”
The final version was recorded by Ambrose (percussion), Cavs (drums), Cook (bass/synthesizer) and Stu (vocals/synthesizer/drums/Mellotron/percussion). “Butterfly 3000” was released on June 11th, 2021.
“Ya Love” later appeared in a video filmed at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles released on the 24th, as well as Gizz goes to the zoo.
In the 2022 video game Gran Turismo 7, the song appears on its soundtrack and can be heard on the menu.