Songfacts®:

• In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jim Lauderdale was worried he'd never be able to perform live again, and his fears stifled his creativity until he found hope and started writing songs to help others find it too. On "Brave One," from his 2021 album, Hope, the singer-songwriter encourages frontline healthcare workers to press on in the face of adversity.
  
  "During this nightmarish period, these folks are real heroes that are putting their lives out there for us," he explained on American Songwriter's Off The Record podcast in 2021.
• While healthcare workers were at the forefront of his mind when he wrote the song, Lauderdale said it could apply to any other brave ones who risk their lives for others. "Anybody that's in some kind of service, whether it be military or what - just people that are risking their lives and sticking their necks out," he told Paste Magazine in 2021.
• In the lyrics, Lauderdale tries to make sense of the state of the world and asks that the third eye on our heads would be opened and the meaning to be revealed. This is a reference to Eastern spiritual philosophies that suggest there's an invisible third eye on the forehead that represents wisdom that can't be attained through ordinary sight.
• Lauderdale co-produced the album with his longtime collaborator and bassist Jay Weaver. It was recorded at Nashville's Blackbird Studio, where students at the Blackbird Academy, the studio's in-house audio-engineering school, engineered the bulk of the release.