Songfacts®:

• Jeff Buckley drafted young guitarist Michael Tighe into his band late in the recording of Grace. A guitar part that Tighe penned in his early teens sparked this song. He recalled to Uncut:
  
  "I composed the chord progression for 'So Real' when I was 14 or 15. When I first met Jeff, I played that for him and he was really taken with it.
  
  A year or two later, at some of the rehearsals for their first tour, he was like, 'Remember that song you played me on your bed a couple of years ago at your parents place?' So I started playing it, and he got behind the drums and came up with that beat and started singing the melody of the chorus."
• The lyrics came last. Tighe recalled: "We did 'So Real' in an afternoon. That night Jeff was feverishly writing in his notepad, then he took a walk round Hell's Kitchen come back came back and recorded the vocals for it. So I think he wrote most of the lyrics that night. It was pretty beautiful the way it all came together so quickly."
• "Forget Her" was expected to be the first single on Grace, until Buckley replaced it on the track listing with "So Real." "Forget Her" remained officially unreleased until it featured as the opening track on the bonus disc of Grace: Legacy Edition, a 2004 remastered reissue of the album.