Hughes credits inspiration to the song on drummer Joey Castillo:
Dude, listen. I’m the fuckin luckiest hillbilly on the face of the Earth to be in this touring band right now, with this cast of criminals. [Joey] Castillo… he’s one of the fuckin reasons I wrote Wannabe In L.A., dude. Cause L.A. is the great irony of my life. How it is that I came to the phoniest fucking environment ever made by man, Hollywood, and was able to find the best examples of friendship, integrity, truth… I was able to find role models and a family of friends who’ve looked out for me above and beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. That shit doesn’t happen everyday, and you’d be an asshole to miss that.[1]
The song also references Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider when Hughes says 'Alain and Natasha always make me say, I really wanna be in L.A."
The music video contains two versions directed by Liam Lynch. The Standard version is the original version and the Pins version uses CGI pins recreating images from the original music video.
