Songfacts®:

• In a press release to promote her album Folklore, Nelly Furtado said of this song: "This is about the reality of love. My energy used to just go everywhere, but now I'm more grounded because I've found true love. The idea here is that, yeah, sometimes life sucks. But life is only so long, and somebody can come along who makes you want to be a better person. You just have to roll with the punches. So 'Try' is not a happy-go-lucky song. It has a strange arrangement because the chorus happens only twice, and the end is improvisational. It's like one of those epic power ballads."
• A Spanish version called "Dar" was released in 2007. Furtado is of Portuguese ancestry and can speak both Spanish and Portuguese. In 2009 she released a Spanish-language album called Mi Plan.
• Sophie Muller, who directed Furtado's "Turn Off The Light" promo, helmed the music video. In the period piece (possibly Colonial America), Furtado and her fictional husband try to conceive a baby using folklore methods (the singer is shown tying lover's knots underneath the bedsprings).
• "Try" was released as a single from Furtado's second album, Folklore. The album didn't do nearly as well as her debut, Whoa, Nelly!, which had the big hits "Turn Off The Light" and "I'm Like A Bird." For her third album, Loose in 2006, she teamed up with producer Timbaland and infused her songs with more danceable grooves, resulting in two #1 hits: "Promiscuous" and "Say It Right."