Songfacts®:

• In the Daily Mail May 11, 2007, lead singer Adam Levine explained the meaning of this song: "It's about desperately trying to impress a girl and doing everything I could to make her listen to me."
• The guitar undertone on this song is based on the bass line from The Police's "Every Breath You Take." Frontman Adam Levine admitted to The Guardian newspaper November 16, 2007 the influence of "Every Breath You Take" on this song: "[Every Breath] is one of my favorite songs ever written. I wanted to write a song like it. There was no way it wasn't a direct influence."
  
  Maroon 5's guitarist James Valentine added: "When Adam first brought the song to the band. It was like The Beach Boys meets The Strokes, because of the way the guitars were arranged. It's still like that in the chorus, but the turn came when we were recording it, and we came across that muted part in the verse. We were like, 'Should we do that?' And we decided, 'It's fine - it's an homage to one of our favorite bands.'"
• When Maroon 5 supported The Police during their 2007 reunion tour, they didn't play this song because of its obvious debt to "Every Breath You Take." Adam Levine explained in his Guardian interview: "The song would not have turned out the way that it did had they gotten back together before we made the album. They were totally dead and gone, and were never going to get back together. And they announced their tour a week after our album came out. It would have been silly to play it."
• Actress Tania Raymonde (Malcolm in the Middle, Lost) appears in the video as the woman Adam Levine walks out on. Sophie Muller, who directed clips for Maroon 5's "This Love" and "She Will Be Loved," directed the video.
• "Won't Go Home Without You" was the third single from Maroon 5's second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, following "Makes Me Wonder" and "Wake Up Call." The group's debut album, Songs About Jane, was released in 2002, and after a year or so touring with acts like Train, Counting Crows and Sugar Ray, they joined their ranks of pop-radio regulars with songs like "This Love" and "Sunday Morning."