Songfacts®:

• Michelle Willis duets with fellow Canadian turned New Yorker Taylor Ashton on this soulful track about a self-destructive person who needs a wake-up call.
  
  "'Trigger' is about being your own worst enemy. It's an attempt to talk some sense into myself and people I love, to wake up and recognize no one but themselves are holding them back," Willis explains. "Turning it into a duet gave the song more of a story, like two people in a relationship calling each other out."
• This is the second single from Willis' sophomore album, Just One Voice.
• Willis told the Songfacts Podcast that she met Ashton - who released his debut album, The Romantic, in 2020 - at one of his gigs, where she was impressed by his vocal ability and banjo skills. The pair became friends and met up again after they both moved to New York City, and they finally got to make music together on this tune. Willis explained:
  
  "When I started working on this song, I was also looking for opportunities to invite other people to be on this record and be featured and 'Trigger' was a perfect setting for that. When it was originally written, I was thinking of certain people, but I also thought of how it's also a song to myself, and I liked the idea of having another person. It's like two people calling each other out, but for the same things. In the same way that I'm calling someone else out, it's actually my own shit that I need to deal with. He was just perfect for that."
  
  "I knew Taylor was going to kill it," she continued. "I also love his banjo playing. It's very unique, which is an oxymoron, very unique. It's just unique. He played it in a way that no one else I know does. It's just so him and has such a distinct character. So, we ended up only using his banjo towards the end - you really only start to hear it in that outro."
• Willis recorded two versions of the album - a live one, and a studio one. The live concert was staged at a renovated Buddhist temple in Toronto. For "Trigger," Willis was joined by David Crosby, who also contributed backing vocals to the album's third single, "Liberty." Willis, who's also a member of Crosby's Sky Trails and Lighthouse bands, wrote most of the album while she was on the road with the CSNY alum.