Songfacts®:

• Post Malone focuses during this acoustic ballad on his struggle to keep a relationship together.
  
  Can we have a little conversation?
  Figure it out with no intoxication
  We carry on, what is our motivation?
  We're never wrong, how the hell we gonna make it?
  
  It is has been suggested that the Syracuse-born artist penned the song during a short split between him and his longtime girlfriend, Ashlen.
• Post Malone wrote the song with Andrew Watt, who has also worked with the likes of DJ Snake featuring Justin Bieber ("Let Me Love You"), Kygo & Selina Gomez ("It Ain't Me") and Camila Cabello ("Havana"). Watt recalled the story of the song to Uproxx:
  
  "For a while we were calling it 'George,' because it reminded us of George Harrison because of the chords in the song. We met up in Henson studios, this legendary studio in L.A. and sat there with guitars for a while and wrote that song. I think it's somewhere between Oasis and David Bowie, just this weird thing. Then he starts rapping on it. It's just something only Post could do."
• The song was recorded with two guitars to create a more expansive sound. Watt played a 1946 Martin O-18 and Post Malone a 1953 Gibson J-45. Watt commented to Genius: "The magic's in two of them together."
• The song was originally titled "George Forever" as it reminded Post Malone and Watt of George Harrison. However, when it was time to put it on the album, they thought "it's kind of weird if we have a song named George," so they named it "Stay" because it's the song's last word.
• Malone performed this at the Grammy Awards in 2019 before going into "Rockstar," then performing "The Getaway" with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.