Norah Jones explained how "Chasing Pirates" came to be, "About a year ago, I did some demos in my home studio. I had some friends come in and we figured out a cool arrangement for 'Chasing Pirates,' with a cool drum part. It went somewhere I didn't expect it to go, and that became a direction to look in."[2]
Music video
October 27, 2009 VH1 aired the full version of Norah Jones's "Chasing Pirates" music video directed by Rich Lee.
In the beginning of the music video, she finds a map of Manhattan in a bottle while sitting on the couch in an apartment complex. In the next scene of the music video, she steers a building from a roof made to look like a pirate ship as she tries to find what is marked on the map. She also sits on deck before the roof transforms into a pirate ship. The music video also gained significant airplay on Australia's channel GO as filler time between programs in late 2009 and early 2010.