Songfacts®:

• "Simple Mess" is a heart-rending ballad on DEC3's debut self-titled album. The song was written entirely on an acoustic guitar by DEC3's main songwriter, Jon Haber. In our interview with Haber, he recalled the tracking process for the song. "When I went to record it, I just played through it on an acoustic guitar and that's the actual guitar that's on the record. I never re-did it. I just played it through one time," Haber joked. "Probably the only thing I played without having to pop something in to fix a mistake."
  
  Haber also played bass on the tune and the electric guitar. The piano part was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee by Shane Keister from the pop act Five for Fighting.
• Jon Haber revealed the story happening in the tune: "The song's about a guy who loses his girlfriend or wife and falls in love with somebody else but she's married."
  
  The character in the ditty is under the impression that she likes him too and is confident that if the situation were different, they would be together. But as the tune progresses, he becomes unsure of her feelings for him. By the end, the lyrics in the chorus change from "some other time you would have been mine" to "you might have been mine" displaying well his uncertainty about her feelings toward him.