Songfacts®:

• "Checking In" is from For King & Country's Unsung Hero "Inspired By" soundtrack album. The song features For King & Country's Curb label mate, country crooner Lee Brice, and tackles a heart-rending story.
• For King & Country and Brice detail a son grappling with the loss of his father. He stumbles upon an old voicemail – just the dad "checking in" like he always did. The song explores the emotions this son wrestles with – the grief, the longing for one more chat. Buckle up, it's a tearjerker.
• Unsung Hero follows the Smallbone family, which Joel and Luke Smallbone of For King & Country and their sister Rebecca St. James joined as Christian recording artists.
  
  The song mirrors the movie's story of their father, David Smallbone (played by Joel Smallbone) and his complicated relationship with his pops, James (played by Terry O'Quinn).
• "Checking In" almost never saw the light of day. Songwriters Michael Farren, Garrett Jacobs, and Ken Hart were having one of those dry spells in Nashville where even the coffee couldn't jumpstart creativity. Farren was feeling under the weather, ready to bail on the whole session, but then a glimmer of inspiration struck.
  
  "Anytime my dad calls me, he always ends the call with, 'Just checking in to see how you were doing,'" Garrett recalled to Billboard, "so I wrote that down in my notes."
  
  Turns out, Farren knew the feeling all too well. His dad does the same thing. Soon, the room was filled with the melody of a familiar voicemail, morphing into a song that hit close to home for both of them.
  
  "I'm a stream-of-consciousness writer, so I spit out the first verse and chorus in one pass," said Farren. "It was just because it was so real to what I hear my dad say all the time. I have so many of those voice messages saved."
• Farren debuted the song live the very next night at Nashville's The Listening Room. By the end, the sniffles were real – his wife confirmed what he felt on stage: grown men were bawling.
  
  The emotion translated online too. Farren's acoustic TikTok performance of "Checking In" racked up over 300,000 views in just 24 hours. That kind of buzz caught the attention of Curb's Colt Murski, who sent the link to Lee Brice. Brice didn't hesitate – the song was on hold within 10 minutes.
• While For King & Country's sound leans more pop than country, "Checking In" struck a chord. With the Unsung Hero movie in progress, Luke Smallbone saw a perfect fit for the "Inspired By" soundtrack. He floated the idea to their producer, Ben Glover (who also works with Brice), and things got interesting.
  
  Glover, used to the Smallbones' signature sound, was surprised. "The one thing that I never would have thought was that they would do anything country because that's just not their wheelhouse," said the producer. "They're not trying to turn country - that's not their thing at all. I think it was more like, 'We want to do it because we really like the song.'"
• The brothers took a hands-off approach, letting Glover work his magic. "I had called Glover and kind of given him my vision for the song, but it still was essentially country," said Smallbone. "He was like, 'Hey, man, I'm just going to go do this. If you guys want to come by, you can, but I know exactly what I need to do.'"