Songfacts®:

• According to press materials, The Big To-Do is themed loosely around crime and (self-) punishment. This song, for instance, is both a true story, which was seen on Court TV, and the closest frontman Patterson Hood (the son of bassist David Hood of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) has come to making the movie he started out to make a decade or more back.
• The song tells the true story of a Tennessee woman who killed her God-less church-minister husband. Hood told Gibson.com why he decided to write a song about the court case: "That story seemed to be following me around. I was in Norway when it broke, and it was news even over there. A year later I was in Mississippi, with the TV on, and they were showing the court proceedings. They pulled out the wig, the go-go boots, and other things [the pastor] would make her wear. You could actually hear the gasp in the room, as if it were an episode of Perry Mason. I knew then that I was going to write a song about it."