Songfacts®:

• This is the debut single released by Julia Michaels, who is better known as a songwriter of hit tunes for the likes of Selena Gomez ("Good For You") and Justin Bieber ("Sorry").
• Michaels penned this ode to her anxieties with her regular songwriting partner Justin Tranter at a songwriting camp run by Stargate and Benny Blanco. Several artists were interested in the tune but Michaels decided she wanted to record it herself. "I thought, 'This song is too much my story to give to someone else,'?" she told Billboard magazine. "'Maybe this is a sign. Maybe I want something different.'"
• The confessional love song was inspired by Michaels' real-life relationship with her boyfriend. She explained:
  
  "My boyfriend and I like to fight a lot. I have a lot of problems. He has a lot of problems. Somehow, we always work them out and find a way back to each other.
  
  'Issues' is knowing and accepting you have problems and your partner has problems and when s--- gets hard, you don't just walk away, you make it work - no matter how f----- up you are. You're there for each other."
• What are some of the issues that Julia Michaels deals with in the song? She explained to Genius:
  
  "I am a very jealous person. My lows are really f---ing low, and my highs are high. I'm very defensive. If you judge me, I'm going to be like, "Oh, well! You too!" That's just who I am. I mean I can go on and on. I could fill a dictionary full of problems that I have within my mind.
  
  I'm a very non-confrontational person. I tend to be pretty passive aggressive. Which, makes for great lyrical content, I guess, because I don't say anything to anybody and then there's a song."
• By the time Julia Michaels had released her mini-album Nervous System on July 28, 2017, she'd broken up with the boyfriend who'd inspired this song. All the tracks on the record were inspired by their relationship and its breakup. "It is seriously what I was going through over the last couple of months and going through my last relationship and why it couldn't work," Michaels explained to 92.3 AMP Radio. "All the things that I loved and all the things that were ultimately our demise."
  
  Asked what her ex thinks of the songs, Michaels replied: "He congratulated me on it. He's like, 'It's a really good album, congratulations.' And I was like, 'You love it because it's all about you... d--k.'" (laughs).
• Benny Blanco insisted Julia Michaels keep "Issues" for herself. When the song was first written, multiple big-name artists fought to record it - a Charlie XCX demo even leaked onto YouTube - but Blanco told everyone, "If she wants the song, give her the song. It's her heart and soul."
  
  At the time, Michaels didn't even have a record deal, and many in the industry thought it was a risky move. But Blanco's gamble paid off: "Issues" launched her solo career and earned Grammy nominations for Song of the Year and Best New Artist.