Songfacts®:

• In 2019 Maia Sharp met up with fellow Nashville singer-songwriters Mindy Smith and Dean Fields for a songwriting session, but the trio needed to vent their frustrations before they got down to business. They were all disheartened by the cruelty they witnessed on the news day in and day out, with folks being "unapologetically awful to each other," so they wrote "Kind" as a kind of remedy. In the song, Sharp isn't bothered by anyone's preferences or financial status as long as they're kind.
  
  "We started down the rant path and realized it'd be more universal and more fun to sing from the positive point of view," Sharp explained to Songfacts in a track-by-track interview. "So we set out to cover the things people might prejudge like race, gender, faith and orientation with lighter images like jalapeno ice cream and honeybees. Sounds wacky but it makes sense if you hear the song."
• This is the first single from the alt-country singer-songwriter's ninth studio album, Reckless Thoughts. She also wrote the second single, "She'll Let Herself Out," with the help of Dean Fields.
• Around the time she wrote this, Sharp's life was in a state of flux, as she'd just left a long-term relationship and moved from her native California to Nashville. She recorded the 2021 album Mercy Rising about the experience, but saved "Kind" for her subsequent release. The album title is a nod to her state of mind, which was full of reckless thoughts as she wondered how the next chapter of her life would unfold.
  
  "I never thought I would leave California," she admitted in a press release. "Once I did, I had a feeling it would be easier to build a community in Nashville, but I had no idea how much easier it would be. It's really tapped into something I didn't know I needed so badly."
• Sharp has been a recording artist since 1997, when she released her debut album, Hardly Glamour, but she's been a songwriter even longer. She landed her first cut for a major artist when Cher recorded "Don't Come Around Tonite" on her 1995 album, It's A Man's World. In between releasing her own solo works, she pens songs for a wide range of artists, including Kathy Mattea, David Wilcox, Lisa Loeb, Edwin McCain, Trisha Yearwood, Keb' Mo', Terri Clark, and Dixie Chicks.