Songfacts®:

• Blessed was the first album released by Lucinda Williams after her marriage to her manager Tom Overby. Some people were surprised that the newly wed Alternative Country singer-songwriter included this number about love gone sour in the collection. Williams explained in an interview with The Boot that she started on the song several years previously when she was working on her 2008 album Little Honey and was trying to get one last bit of angst about a previous beau out of her system. Said the singer: "'Buttercup' was [begun] about the time I wrote 'Jailhouse Tears,' when I was working on Little Honey. I came up with the idea [for the lyrics] 'you live the life of a little kid with bruises on your knees.' After that line, I knew it was going to be something. It is funny because sometimes I work on them and work on them, and you can't force them. Sometimes you have to put them aside and come back later. I don't write every day. I am always coming up with lines and everything and just keep everything. For that one, I was thinking of one person when I was writing."
• Lucinda Williams told the A.V. Club this was the only "bad-boy song" on the album and that it was inspired by the same guy she wrote "Jailhouse Tears" about (from her previous album, Little Honey).