“Albert Camus” is a single by Tom Rosenthal. The philosophical work of Albert Camus, a twentieth-century French-Algerian journalist and author, heavily deals with the absurdity of life, something Tom Rosenthal experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown in the UK. During Tom’s first Instagram Live show, where he premiered a snippet of “Albert Camus”, Rosenthal notes about the pandemic:

I hope everyone is well. It’s a very strange thing, this. It’s like a kind of weird dream, really.

During the stream, Tom announced that he was working on an album, but that a few singles in the meantime seemed nice. “Albert Camus” was officially announced as a single on 17 June 2020, to be released two days later. Announcements were spread across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, featuring Tom reading Albert Camus' The Outsider (also translated as The Stranger). On Instagram he writes:

I’m aware there are a million more important things going on in the world right now. Things we can’t and shouldn’t ignore. The song I’ll share on Friday, ‘Albert Camus’, is a significant one for me. It’s about the absurdity of existence, personal epiphanies, and confronting harsh realities. The song was written at the height of lockdown times and is rooted in our rapidly changing mad mad world.