Songfacts®:

• Munhall, Pennsylvania, native Gabby Barrett began singing in her local gospel choir at nine. Two years later she was playing shows, and by the age of 17, Gabby was performing live over 130 times a year. She came into national prominence as a finalist on ABC's American Idol in 2018, finishing in third place.
  
  Following her third-place finish on Idol, Barrett released "I Hope" independently as a single. The song began garnering serious attention after she made her first Idol return performance on May 5, 2019. It led to Barrett signing a deal with Warner Nashville, which officially released "I Hope" on July 29, 2019.
• Barrett co-wrote the song with Jon Nite and Zachary Kale with production by Ross Copperman. The vengeful anthem tells the story of a woman suffering a breakup and wanting her ex to feel the same pain he caused her.
• I hope she's wilder than your wildest dreams
  She's everything you're ever gonna need
  And then I hope she cheats
  Like you did on me
  
  Barrett told People that she, Nite and Kale originally set out to write a song about a girl wishing for her ex to be happy. Barrett decided to turn her into someone more revengeful.
  
  "The fact is that sometimes we hope for the worst when it comes to our exes. We would never voice that, but it wreaks [havoc] inside," she said. "This song now says the things that maybe you or I never said."
• The song climbed to #1 on the Country chart dated July 25, 2020. In doing so, Barrett became the first female to top the tally with her debut single since Carrie Underwood did so with "Jesus, Take The Wheel" in 2006.
  
  By December 19, 2020, it had spent 20 weeks atop the tally, more weeks than any other song by a solo female artist. Prior to Barrett's chart achievement, Maren Morris had held the record with "The Bones," which sat at #1 for 19 weeks earlier in 2020.
• Charlie Puth is a big fan of the song, and he reached out to Barrett on Instagram saying he wanted to remix it and add additional vocals.
  
  Barrett told ABC Audio she is thrilled their duet version adds a male point of view. "When I wrote it, I was just writing from a woman's kind of perspective," she explained. "And so with him being on it, it kind of shows a men's perspective too, that both sides get cheated on and it's not just a one-sided thing."
  
  "So he's gonna be kind of talking to the guys," Barrett added. "And I'm talking to the girls."
• When "I Hope" climbed from #11 to #10 on the Hot 100, Barrett became the first solo female artist in eight years to reach the Hot 100 Top 10 with a song on the country chart. The previous solo female to do so was Taylor Swift when her "Red" single peaked at #6 in 2012.
• The song jumped from #6 to #5 in its 45th week on the Hot 100, making it the longest trek to the Top 5 in the chart's history. It eclipsed the 42-week ascent to the Top 5 of Imagine Dragons' 2013 hit, "Radioactive."
• Gabby Barrett penned "I Hope" during a 2018 Halloween session with Jon Nite and Zach Kale. At the time she was flying back-and-forth from her hometown of Munhall, Pennsylvania, to Nashville trying to kick-start her country career. This was only the fourth song Barrett wrote in Music City. "It was a thrown-together write that wasn't really supposed to happen," she recalled to Billboard.