"Matilda" is a really powerful song about acceptance and moving on, disguised as a story about Roald Dahl's popular character. Telling lyrics like, "You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know / And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love / You don't have to be sorry for leaving and growing up," portray this. He told Apple Music that the song is about a specific person, though he said he hadn't told them that. He said he wanted to make the song for them with their story, as it wasn't something he himself had lived. "I wanna support you in some way," he said of writing the tune. "But it's not necessarily my place to make it about me; cause it's not my experience. Sometimes it's just about listening. I hope that's what it did. I hope it just says 'I was listening to you.'"
He further told NPR that this can be interpreted as Dahl's Matilda all grown up and moving past her childhood trauma. "I think people have so much guilt with things that they don't necessarily need to have guilt with," he said of using the song as a form of self-care. "It's your right to protect the space around you and be protective of yourself and look after yourself."