Songfacts®:

• Dasha wrote this gentle ballad when she was anticipating a move to Nashville, where the guy she was seeing could finally become her full-time boo after about a year of casual dating. The album title, "42," comes from a text message exchange with the guy. She was counting down the days, and when he asked her how many were left, her answer was 42.
• By the time this song was released, Dasha had not only broken up with the guy it's about, but had also put out a hit song inspired by his duplicitous prevarications: "Austin." Here's the back story:
  
  Dasha grew up in San Luis Obispo, California and went to Nashville when she was 18 to study music at Belmont University in 2018. When the pandemic hit in 2020, she left school and moved back home, but also launched her music career, recording remotely, mostly with folks she met in Nashville. She had been seeing the guy "42" is about in Nashville, and when she wrote the song she was at her mom's house in San Luis Obispo, looking forward to her move.
  
  But just two weeks later, Dasha me another guy: a musician named Arden Jones, and they clicked. "I wrote the whole song, and then I meet my current boyfriend two weeks after that and forget all about the old dude," Dasha explained on the Zach Sang show. "I met him, and it was the feeling of home. I was like, 'Oh, this is safe and this is love.' The first time we met, I knew we were going to date. He made me so happy and I knew he had my back."
  
  She ended up re-writing the second verse to be about Jones.
• Dasha wrote this song with the Nashville-based musician Jack Schrepferman, who also produced it.
• "42" is part of What Happens Now?, Dasha's second album but first on a major label. After recording for the small label Quadio from 2020-2023, Dasha released the single "Austin" independently, using her TikTok following to promote. The line dance she devised for the song caught fire, and suddenly there was a bidding war to sign her. Dasha went with Warner Records, which released What Happens Now?