Songfacts®:

• This song finds Miranda Lambert returning to the energy of her debut album Kerosene. "I'm like a locomotive," she proclaims. "I don't run out of steam."
• When Miranda Lambert debuted the song during her live set at the June 2019 CMA Music Festival in June 2019, she called it "total country punk-rock." A month later, the singer dropped the studio recording of "Locomotive" alongside her single, "It All Comes Out in the Wash."
• Though Lambert and her band deliver the song at top speed, it wasn't always such a breakneck banger. When she wrote the song with Ashley Monroe and K.S. Rhoads, it was more of a folk tune. Lambert recalled to Taste of Country that she loved the lyrics but felt it "wasn't finding its spot."
  
  It was Lambert's producer Jay Joyce who suggested the change. He said, "Let's try a flaming red vibe - let's do it punk and see what happens."
• There is a mention of the country star's happy second marriage to New York Cop Brendan McLoughlin. About halfway through "Locomotive," Lambert declares in a reference to her new marital bliss, "He gives me wings!" It's an allusion to her 2016 The Weight of These Wings album, which chronicled Lambert's divorce from Blake Shelton.
  
  She goes on to explain that McLoughlin is frying chicken, while she writes songs on the porch.
  
  I'm sweet tea sippin'
  On the front porch sittin'
  While my hubby fries chicken
  And I'm pickin' these strings