Songfacts®:

• Jelly Roll tackles mental health struggles head-on in "I Am Not Okay."
  
  The emotionally raw ballad opens with just acoustic guitar and his voice confessing his struggles with his demons. But there's a message of solidarity too. The chorus acknowledges the shared experience of battling depression and anxiety, offering a lifeline to those feeling alone.
  
  While the song doesn't shy away from the darkness, it also offers hope as Jelly Roll reminds us that we have a future in heaven where we'll be free from pain.
  
  "For everyone going through something - it's okay to not be okay, but it's all gonna be alright!" Jelly Roll wrote on Instagram.
• Jelly Roll has been open about his depression and anxiety. In a 2023 documentary, Jelly Roll: Save Me, he mentions his mom's struggles with depression and how it might have influenced his own mental health and addiction issues. Songs like "I Am Not Okay" directly address these issues. Others like "Son Of A Sinner" and "Halfway To Hell" touch on his urges to drink and pop pills.
• Jelly Roll co-wrote "I Am Not Okay" with seasoned Nashville songwriters Ashley Gorley, Casey Brown and Taylor Phillips.
  
  Ashley Gorley is known for his work with artists like Luke Bryan (That's My Kind of Night," "Play It Again") and Morgan Wallen ("Last Night," "I Had Some Help).
  
  Casey Brown is Russell Dickerson's longtime writing partner.
  
  Taylor Phillips' other songwriting credits include Luke Combs' "Hurricane," Kane Brown's "Like I Love Country Music" and Morgan Wallen's "Thinkin' Bout Me."
• Zach Crowell produced the song. He also helmed the majority of Jelly Roll's Whitsitt Chapel album.
• Jelly Roll first performed "I'm Not Okay" during the Season 25 finale of The Voice on May 21, 2024. He also sang it during CMA Fest in Nashville, where he closed out the June 8 performances at Nissan Stadium. He released it as a single four days later.
• In the fall of 2023, Ashley Gorley and Casey Brown booked flights to meet Jelly Roll and Taylor Phillips on tour in North Carolina. But airline chaos struck! Eight frustrating hours of delays and a different airport landing later, they rented a car in Charlotte and drove another four hours to meet up.
  
  Despite the travel nightmare, they churned out two or three songs before Jelly Roll's October 5, 2023, show in Wilmington. That concert turned out to be a turning point.
  
  "I found myself multiple times during the show kind of looking at the crowd to see the reaction of these people that were soaking in this music," Phillips remembered to Billboard. He likened the experience to a religious revival.
  
  On the bus ride to the next stop, Phillips told Jelly Roll the concert was like going to church, a space where folks could openly express their struggles. Jelly Roll noted that he was essentially making it "okay for people to not be okay."
  
  This resonated with Gorley, who had a song title already logged in his phone: "I Am Not Okay." He sat down at the piano, and as he sang the title, the melody and lyrics of this song began to flow.
• The song's theme struck a deep chord with Gorley. He'd hoped the trip would yield a song that addressed depression, a topic close to both his and Phillips' hearts (Phillips lost his friend Brian Kindle to suicide on Christmas Eve in 2020).
  
  "I've been blessed beyond belief," Gorley shared. "But some days, I'm still like, 'Oh, shoot, this is gonna be rough.' You know, I lay there, and everybody in the room feels the same. Anybody around the world feels the same, if we're honest about it."
• By the bridge of "I Am Not Okay," Jelly Roll has taken a hopeful turn, contemplating an afterlife where the struggles cease. This glimpse of eternal peace offers a glimmer of motivation to keep pushing forward, though it's unclear if he'll ever find emotional healing during his time on Earth.
  
  "If you put too much of a bow on it, it doesn't feel like an authentic Jelly song," Brown said. "There's a really cool thing that all of his songs do, where it kind of meets you in the middle of hurting, and sits there with you and encourages you in a way that doesn't feel forced. I think he's a really unique voice that can kind of approach songs from that way."
• Jelly Roll performed this song when he made his acting debut in the second episode of the second season of Tulsa King, starring Sylvester Stallone as a mobster exiled from New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• "I Am Not Okay" was the lead single from Jelly Roll's 10th album, Beautifully Broken. The record debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, giving JR his first chart-topper. His previous best placing was the #3 that Whitsitt Chapel peaked at in 2023.
• "I Am Not Okay" was an idea Gorley had in his phone. "I thought, 'Hey, that could be a song, and he would be the person, if he's down to do it, to sing that,' So credit to him on that," Gorley said during the Hollywood & Mind event at Nashville's Anzie Blue. "When you write something that heavy - and it's a ballad - you never know how it'll land. For him to say, 'I'm going to launch my album with this'... it's not exactly a roll-your-windows-down kind of song."
• Gorley saw the song's impact firsthand: "I got to see a couple of Jelly's shows, and the signs people held up, the way they connected to that thought. It doesn't try to fix everything or say, 'Hey, if you're not okay, do this and you'll be great.' That honesty was really important."
  
  Gorley said he felt "lucky" to have written it with an artist willing to open up emotionally. As a gesture of that spirit, he donated his royalties from "I Am Not Okay" to fund new mental health initiatives for songwriters.