Songfacts®:

• This song is an ode to family members. They may not always be perfect, but according to Kacey Musgraves, "you get what you get."
• Kacey Musgraves penned the song with frequent collaborator Shane McAnally and "Merry Go 'Round" co-writer Josh Osborne. "'Family Is Family' was a really fun one to write," the singer told Taste of Country, "because we got to sit there and dream up and laugh about, just all these little nuances that happen in families."
  
  "Kacey is very specific when it comes to the kind of song she wants to write, or the way she wants it to feel," Shane McAnally continued. "She sort of has it mapped out in her head by the time we start to work on something."
  
  "Line by line, there's not one person in that song that's not real," he added with a laugh.
• Kacey Musgraves hit the stage of Late Night With Seth Meyers on June 10, 2015 to perform this song on the talk show - the first time the track has been heard on television.
• The song came from a story that Musgraves' sister told her about a small town in Texas called Marfa, which she had visited. The singer told UK newspaper The Guardian: "She made friends with a local chick and asked the girl, 'What's it like to live here?' She said: 'Well, for one thing, this town's way too small to be mean.' I really loved that. It's true. You can be an a--hole in a big city and it's not going to come back to you as much, but, in a small town, it's very transparent. You see what you get with people, and that's just the way it is."