Songfacts®:

• Lambert wrote this simmering torch song at a Michigan show with fellow Pistol Annie Ashley Monroe and Jessi Alexander, who also co-penned the 2014 ACM Song of the Year "I Drive Your Truck."
• The song features a strong vocal performance by Lambert. "My dad's best friend of 45 years had passed away not too long before I sang it in the studio," she recalled to Billboard magazine. "They were music lovers and I remember when we wrote it I couldn't wait to play it for him, his name was Rod, and I was like, 'oh my god, Rod will love this.' He was kind of my music judge, I always couldn't wait for him and his wife to listen to my records and tell me what they thought, they love music so much."
  
  "He had passed away, and I couldn't find inspiration," Lambert continued. "It's hard to find inspiration when you're not doing it live. I do a lot of my vocals right when we're cutting it, but this one I had to go back in and sing. Like, you're standing in there on a Wednesday at 2 o'clock, it's hard to get inspired. I was just walking in out of an interview and I couldn't get my mojo, and I started thinking about him and her and their love, they'd been married for so long, and how much they loved music together."
  
  "Something came over me, and I was singing it like she would to Rod, how would she say it?," she concluded. "I called her a couple weeks later and said, 'hey, I cut this song, and you and Rod were my inspiration.' That song means a lot to our family now because of that, and I hope it's one of those songs that people find something to grasp on to with it."
• Jennifer Lawrence is a huge fan of this track. When she stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on January 4, 2022, the host asked her to select the one song she'd want to listen to for the rest of her life. After some waffling, the actress chose "Holding On To You."