Songfacts®:

• This is the opening song and title track from American Country group Little Big Town's fourth studio album. Phillip Sweet of LBT told us how the song came together. Said Sweet: "There's a lot that goes on between the four of us to split it equally and share ideas. For 'The Reason Why' particularly - and this is kind of a snapshot of sometimes how it works - I think Jimi had started that idea, the melody, and had written the lyric, but had a little bit different take on it. It was a little bit more of a cocky take. It was more of, 'I could love you if you want me to.' It was a little bit more of a taunting more than alluring kind of thing.
  
  But he worked on the lyric and brought it to us, and when we came together to write, he was like, 'What do you all feel about this?' And we all liked the idea and the melody was cool, and that whole thing - twelve string chunky guitar at the beginning - had a cool feel to it. But we all collectively just felt like the mood would feel better and it would reflect us more truly if it really talked about the love, the goodness that we're feeling at this moment right now. And 'I could go and fall for you and never even try,' because that was the truth about where Jim and Karen are with each other, where we are in our relationships respectively, in our life with young kids coming into our world in the last two years.
  
  And so there's been a lot of joy and happiness where we're at in our career and our lives, and it's just like, Wow, how cool is this that we're getting to do this and right now we're having this amazing time and we're all happy and we're all friends; we're not fighting. So there's a lot of layers of emotion there for that song to come out of us. That's why it felt like it could have multiple meanings, whether it's relationship or a loved one. But it's being thankful for the things in your life that make you motivated to wake up every day.
  
  But that's where we took that song, just that love approach. It all starts between two star-crossed lovers, everything comes from there. So when that's strong, good things can happen, and that song just felt right for the lyric direction to go there. It needed a big jangly jam at the end, and we had those lyrics, 'Come on and take my hand, I'm ready and willing over and over again.' Just that joy of love."
• Karen Fairchild of LBT explained to The Boot why the quartet named the album after this cut: "We were toying with lines from songs or inspirations of what the record could be called. And then we started talking about 'The Reason Why,' and we were like, 'Duh! That sums the whole career up.' That particular song is a love song on the record. It's about being in love and being happy in your life and grateful, and we are all those things. But 'The Reason Why' also has different meanings for the band. It's always been about the music for us, and that's really what is always driving us, so that's the main reason why we've been a band for 12 years."