Songfacts®:

• A southpaw is a name for a left-handed person, especially left-handed pitchers and boxers - around one in ten of the world's population is left-handed. This guitar-heavy outlaw anthem finds Moore celebrating standing apart in today's world.
• Moore first came up with a rough demo for the song during soundcheck in South Dakota and sent it to longtime co-writer Westin Davis ("I'm to Blame," "Guitar Man"). By the time soundcheck was over, Davis had sent back some lyrical ideas. The two wrote the song via text before Moore returned to Nashville and they finished the track together.
• For the record, Moore is right handed. He explained to Billboard: "I'm not left handed, but I always loved the title 'Southpaw' and the whole thing behind it because I was a big boxing fan growing up and the most unique thing in the boxing world was a southpaw - a left hand."
  
  "I've just always felt a little out of place in the way the world is right now. I don't do a lot of social media stuff. For me, a lot of times, I look around at all this stuff that we're putting our focus on and sometimes it feels kind of silly to me," he added. "I think that particular day it was maybe a little bit of frustration coming out [and] 'Southpaw' was a metaphor for feeling like I should have been born in a different time and I thought that was a cool way to tackle a song."
• Moore begins the song by declaring, "I should've been a cowboy," before vividly describing the outlaw lifestyle. He'd be living in the black hills, drinking doubles of whiskey, always "ready for a quick draw." However, Moore explained to American Songwriter that rather than pining for the Wild West, his songwriting inspiration came from being cheesed off with modern life.
  
  "I get a little frustrated with the way I see society shaping up and the way everything's become a little vanity-ridden," he said. "Social media to me has gotten out of hand. At times I just feel like I was born at the wrong time and I feel kind of isolated in those thoughts. And then it makes me feel like maybe I'm crusty and jaded. I'm not sure. I'm still trying to process the way I feel sometimes about the way I see everything going."