Songfacts®:

• In this song, Robert De Leo reflects on a love from his past, a woman from Montana, the "big sky state." As he comes to terms with it, he shows a tinge of regret:
  
  I wish I gave you
  What you wanted from me
  But I was tied up from the start
  
  "It's love gained and love lost," he said in a Songfacts track by track. "Of someone very special to me that I lost."
• Robert De Leo is the bass player in Stone Temple Pilots, where he's also a chief songwriter. That band has had exemplary vocalists, first Scott Weiland, then Chester Bennington, and finally Jeff Gutt. "Big Sky Woman" is the first track on his debut solo album, Lessons Learned. He used a clutch of guest singers, with Pete Shoulder taking the vocals on this one. Shoulder, a British singer and guitarist, also sings on the the track "Put Aside Your Sorrows."