Songfacts®:

• Rickie Lee Jones wrote this about her daughter, Charlotte, who was born in 1988, the year before the song was released. Jones is telling her that she will always be there for her. It's a song of love and commitment where she anticipates the challenges her daughter will face, as Jones was indeed a "wild one."
  
  Rickie Lee raised Charlotte as a single mom (she split from her husband, Pascal Nabet-Meyer, in 1990). Charlotte inherited her mom's vocal prowess, and often joined her on stage to sing backup.
• Horses are an important image for Jones. She had a recurring dream as a child that she described to the Daily Telegraph: "It was a dream of a cowboy coming down the road, driving a trailer, and a horse got out and ran down the road, and I caught it. It wouldn't let anyone touch it but me, because it loved me. And I'd say, you have to go back with the man now and the horse would turn sadly to go back; and the cowboy would say, you can have it – it loves you. I dreamt that a lot. And now I'm scared of horses."
• Jones wrote this song with Walter Becker of Steely Dan, who produced the album.
• This song was featured in the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire. When Jones' daughter Charlotte saw the film for the first time, she didn't know her mom's music was a part of it and was shocked to hear her voice.