Songfacts®:

• This heartbreaking yet triumphant autobiographical tale is the title track of singer-songwriter Ashley Monroe's sophomore album. The song was the product of Ashley's first writing session with Nashville legend Guy Clark. "I was trying to pitch him my best ideas," she recalled to Billboard magazine, "and he just looked up at me, and said 'Tell me about you.' So, I started to tell him about myself, about my dad dying, and told him all these things, and at the end, I said, 'But, look, I turned out like a rose.' I don't know why I said that, I guess it was a nervous way to wrap up my story. He looked at me and said, 'Well, why don't we just write that.'"
• Monroe told Billboard that every time she sings this son, she gets "chills and start to cry, because it is so true." The Nashville songstress added she believes that "everyone has their story. We all go through things. You can do that. You just enjoy all the adventures and the heartache, and it's all worth it in the end."
• Vince Gill sings back up on the track. The Country icon not only lent his vocal talents to the album, but also produced it. Monroe explained how Gill helmed the record the old-fashioned way. "We just got the band in a circle and started playing the songs," she recalled, "and once we felt like we had a feel for it, I'd do my vocal live-I never went back in to do a second vocal. Everyone put everything we had into the songs. There was a buzz in the room. We all had fun-it felt like a big old family, the way records used to be made."
• The song is mainly based on Monroe's own personal history - with a few embellishments. "A lot of that is autobiographical - I mean, I didn't run off with a boy to North Dakota like it says, but Guy likes putting North Dakota in songs," she said, with a laugh. "There are a few little inserts of over-exaggeration, but not many."