Songfacts®:

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Miranda Lambert invited Luke Dick and Natalie Hemby to her Tennessee farm to write some songs. Hemby came up with a melody idea and the song title "Strange," and they started discussing the strangeness going on in the world. Arising from that conversation, they penned this song, where they list some of the abnormalities of lockdown life.
  
  Urban feels suburban
  Main Street ain't Main
• During the multiday writing session, Hemby and Dick stayed in separate cabins on Lambert's property. Hemby came up with the hook, as she reflected on the peculiarities of COVID-19 in her cabin.
  
  Times like these make me feel strange
• Hemby conceived the opening line, "Coyotes on my left and wolves on my right," as she considered the confusion that surrounded the virus. "I just felt like I didn't know who the good guy is and the bad guy is here," she told Billboard. "Was everybody bad? I don't know. Sometimes when you're walking through things in life, it's not until after it's over with that you can put it into words."
• When Hemby met up with Lambert and Dick, they conceived a series of metaphorical images that reflected the oddness of life in the pandemic.
  
  Country don't twang
  Rock n roll ain't loud
  Every elevator only ever goes down
  Everybody's looking for a little cheap fame
  
  "It's really an Alice in Wonderland song where you fall down the hole," said Hemby. "There's a Cheshire Cat and a key that don't work, and there's things that make it big and small."
• The chorus finds Lambert urging the listener to do anything that keeps them sane in these strange times. "We kind of wrote it towards addressing some heavy things," Lambert told Zane Lowe on Apple Music, "but mostly we want people to take away from this song to be lighter on their feet and take a breath and play a song and do a dance and maybe fly somewhere fun, just kind of escape from a reality that isn't too good."