Songfacts®:

• "Wilder Days" is a song about meeting the right person at the wrong time. Morgan Wade has fallen for someone who has settled down, so it's not going to work out. If only they'd met when that person was in their wilder days.
  
  "We've all had that one person that got away," Wade explained. "If we met just a few years earlier, it would have worked out and we would have been on the same level. We would have either had a really good thing or made a big mess, but it didn't happen."
• There was a specific person Wade wrote this song about, and they both hated the smell of cigarette smoke, which led to the lines:
  
  You said you hate the smell of cigarette smoke
  You only use to smoke when you drank
  
  Wade says her songs always have some kind of personal connection, but she doesn't like to reveal who they're about.
• Wade had some wild days of her own that nearly ruined her as she got addicted to alcohol when her music career was just getting underway. She had to learn to learn how to have fun and keep her spirit alive while sober, which was a struggle. That message is imbued in the song: "Not to lose that wilder side of yourself, not conform," as she put it. "Stay true."
• "Wilder Days" was the lead single from Morgan Wade's major-label debut album, Reckless, released in 2021. She released a confessional song called "The Night" independently in 2019 that got a lot of attention online, especially when she performed it on livestreams during the pandemic. When she got her record deal with Arista Nashville she was 26 and already well-seasoned. She even had a college degree in health sciences, having planned to become a surgeon. "Wilder Days" made the Country chart at #36 and gave her a nice boost. She soon became a popular performer at festivals.
• Morgan Wade has a raspy voice, so many people assume she smokes, but she doesn't, as we learn in this song when she sings about how she hates the smell.
• Wade started writing this song long before she had a record deal. She wrote it in the bathroom - it was the best room in the house to write songs because of the acoustics. She still has the voice memo from that rough recording.
• Wade wrote "Wilder Days" with Sadler Vaden of Jason Isbell's 400 Unit. They teamed up a few years earlier and worked together on Wade's song "The Night." Sadler also produced "Wilder Days" with Paul Ebersold and contributed bass, guitar, keyboards and backing vocals to the track.