The album was produced by Mr Hudson and Joshua Blair, who had worked with the band on All You Need Is Now (2010) and A Diamond in the Mind: Live 2011 (2012); Nile Rodgers, who had previously first worked on the band's "The Reflex", his remixed version reaching number one, "The Wild Boys" single and Notorious album; and Mark Ronson, who produced All You Need Is Now.

The album cover, designed by artist Alex Israel, consists of his 2013 painting titled "Sky Backdrop"[14] that features icons that represent the band's history.

This includes lips and the eye painted by artist Patrick Nagel for their Rio album;[15] also representing the Rio album is a chauffeur's cap alluding to that record's closing track "The Chauffeur"; a pink telephone, champagne glass and the saxophone representing the single "Rio"; a sumo wrestler representing their controversial video for "Girls on Film"; Duran Duran's teeth are shown to be from "The Wild Boys"; the Eiffel Tower is a reference to the title song from the film A View to a Kill; a rocket from the greatest hits album, Decade; a silhouette of a female representing the single "Skin Trade";[16] an image of a tiger and a snake nodding to their third album Seven and the Ragged Tiger; a white shoe from the single cover and the music video of "Come Undone"; a stylized ice cream cone taken from their "Perfect Day" single.

[19] The lead single from the album, "Pressure Off", was released in the United States on 19 June, first via Microsoft's Xbox Music.

All tracks are written by John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon, with additional writers notedCredits adapted from the liner notes of the deluxe edition of Paper Gods.