Songfacts®:

• This mandolin-driven track was released as the lead single from Higher Truth. Many of the tracks on the album, including "Broken Heart," have an undeniable layer of sorrow to them.
  
  "That's not unusual for me," Cornell told Rolling Stone. "Often times, especially in the context of an acoustic song, I'm motivated to write by some amount of melancholy. I listened to a lot of other acoustic albums going into this. There's a sort of chipper, uptempo nature to a lot of records, like with Jack Johnson, where it sounds great and there's an intimacy to it. But I don't have that in me."
• The Old West-themed video was envisioned by Cornell and directed by Jessie Hill (Sawyer Fredericks' "Please"). The Soundgarden frontman makes his acting debut in the clip as an alleged criminal preparing to be hanged. Hollywood actors Eric Roberts (Runaway Train, Heroes, The Expendables) and, W. Earl Brown (Deadwood) both have cameo roles.
• "I was on tour with Soundgarden, and I remember writing down the title," Cornell recalled in 2015 Yahoo interview. "The title immediately brought up the idea of the song, which is that someone is so distracted by a new person or a new thing in their life that they kind of forgot that they had given up on life. Sometimes it just happens without us even noticing."