Songfacts®:

• This Nicolle Galyon and Jon Nite-penned song is a father conversing with his son about growing up in a man's world and treating people right. Speaking with Taste of Country, Lee Brice said the lyrics take him back to experiences with his own dad, as well as making him think of his two young sons, Takoda and Ryker. The singer added that it packs a similar punch to his 2014 ACM Song of the Year "I Drive Your Truck," about a father who drives the truck of his son who was killed in action in Afghanistan, "It's kind of like when I heard "Truck," it just stopped me... floored me," Brice said. "That's what this song did."
• This was released as the lead single from Brice's self-titled album, despite it being the only song on the record that wasn't written by the singer. There are a couple of reasons he chose "Boy" as the first tune to be heard from the collection. Brice said:
  
  "First, [my wife] Sara and I have two sons … This song is a tribute to them. It's my way of saying how proud I am to be their dad.
  
  The second reason is because, coincidentally, we have a daughter on the way in a couple of weeks, and we wanted to share this song for our boys before she arrived."
• Lee Brice told The Boot why the song is so special to him.
  
  "I was playing it on the road, and we hadn't quite put it out on the radio yet, but I knew we were going to. But as I sang it every night, people would hold up pictures of their boys, and all I could think about was, so many people that I meet every day have such tragic things happen to their young children, and all I would ever think about are my two healthy - completely healthy - boys, and all the other stuff in life that you can easily get angry or frustrated or this or that or complain about. The moment you think about the fact that you have healthy boys, healthy children, and there are so many people who go through so much stuff, it just kind of overwhelms me with joy. I would break down onstage.
  
  The song is great, but that song reminded me of my daddy. And now, as a daddy, I realize how hard he was trying to teach me things that he wanted me to learn for me, not for him. He wanted me to learn these things so that I could be ahead in life, so that I could be ahead in life in joy, and so I could be ahead in life at not having to work so hard and learn all these lessons the hard way. So now I'm trying to teach my kids, and they aren't listening to me. They don't know that I'm trying to help - [that] it's all about them. So the connection between my daddy and myself, and now myself and my sons, that is what makes 'Boy,' the song, so special... I have yet to get through it onstage without breaking down."
• This was written by Jon Nite and Nicolle Galyon in the latter's last songwriting session before maternity leave. Galyon knew she was going to give birth to a boy so Nite suggested they write a song about having sons.
  
  "We didn't really set out to write a song in the Nashville way with an idea," Galyon admitted to American Songwriter. "It was like, 'Let's just write a letter to your son.' We started with the word 'boy' talking to my son Ford and it wrote itself. That isn't typical to write a song chronologically, line by line from start to finish. You usually write it more like an essay where you have a thesis, which is the hook, the end of the chorus and then you work backwards, and you fill in all the supporting verses. It felt divine in the way that it rolled out chronologically."
• Nicolle Galyon recorded a stripped-down version of "Boy" for her own 2022 solo album, Firstborn.