Songfacts®:

• In preparation for her 35th solo album, Dolly Parton retreated to her Tennessee Mountain Home - the inspiration for her 1973 hit of the same name - to get in the right frame of mind through fasting and praying. "Fasting is something that comes out of the church. If you fast, it cleanses your body as well as your mind, so you can leave yourself more open to God," she explained in her 2020 book, Songteller. "I wanted to get more spiritual. I'd been working too hard and not taking care of myself."
• The title track was one of many tunes that came out of her spiritual experience in the Great Smoky Mountains. On the surface, it's about a couple who tries to rekindle their romantic fire, but it's also about keeping life exciting by trying new things. She noted: "'Hungry Again' is one of the songs I wrote during that time. It was kind of saying two things. One of them was 'Let's love like we're hungry again.' But it was also about being hungry for something new and getting out of the doldrums. It was 'Let's live like we're hungry again.' At the time, I felt like I wasn't losing ground, but I wasn't gaining any. And I don't like being in neutral."
• Dolly also spent the three-month period of writing the album at her lake cottage outside of Nashville.
• Dolly was previously signed to the Nashville branch of Rising Tide Records but it closed in the spring of 1998, leaving her without a label. She signed with Decca - which MCA Nashville briefly revived for country releases - and issued Hungry Again.
• Dolly produced the album with her cousin Richie Owens. They recorded it in his basement studio with his band Shinola.