Songfacts®:

• Nathaniel Rateliff is a singer-songwriter from Hermann, Missouri. After recording two Americana-styled solo albums, he formed the throwback R&B group Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats in 2013. This is the lead single from their self-titled debut album.
• This southern-gospel influenced song depicts the struggles of alcoholism as Rateliff croons of a man who is literally drinking his life away. It first gained exposure after the band performed it on Jimmy Fallon's The Tonight Show on August 5, 2015. The host tweeted enthusiastically before the band's performance: "If you believe in soul... if you believe in rock n roll... if you believe in performing your guts out… Enjoy the band on our show tonight."
• Alcohol plays a large part in many of Rateliff's songs (check out the Falling Faster Than You Can Run track "Three Fingers In").
  
  "Well…..I might be a drunk," Rateliff told The Line Of Best Fit. "I've been working on it and singing about it for a while. I quit for a while too, though, but I was just so miserable. I was six months sober, but I guess it's funny to be part of a drinking culture, in my circle of friends and even when you're touring and performing you're in a bar every night... so it's kinda tricky to not lose your ass every night!"
• The song featured on a Lipton's "Be More Tea" iced tea commercial, which was aired during the summer of 2016.
• Surprisingly, this isn't one of its writer's favorites. "It's a funny thing," Rateliff mused to The Sun. "That was the one song I didn't really want to put on the first (Night Sweats) record. It just wasn't something I connected with but I knew that when we played it live, people loved it. There were other things from that first session I liked more as a writer and other things that I liked more for personal reasons. But it was a good choice to put it out there."