Songfacts®:

• This song honors Scotty McCreery's grandfather, Bill McCreery, who passed away unexpectedly in January 2015 two days after celebrating his 86th birthday. Scotty debuted the tune during a concert in Raleigh, North Carolina on October 24, 2015.
  
  "This has become probably my favorite song I've ever written," McCreery told the crowd of the cut. "It's very relatable, I think, for a lot of folks."
• McCreery paid tribute to his grandfather on his Facebook page:
  
  My Granddad was a hard worker who spent 20 years in the US Air Force Strategic Air Command and 10 more years working for the US Civil Service at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. He lived life to the fullest, was good-natured and had a hearty laugh. He was totally devoted to my Grandmother Paquita for 57 years. Together, they raised three children and were inspirations for their six grandchildren. He was one amazing guy who drove a black mustang convertible and could still dive off his diving board in his backyard pool.
• Scotty McCreery co-wrote the emotional track with Frank Rogers and Monty Criswell. He recalled the story of the song to The Boot:
  
  "We sat down at Frank's house - Frank Rogers, my producer and co-writer on the song. I was just kind of talking to him about Grandaddy, and [how] there were a few things I wanted to tell Grandaddy that I didn't get a chance to. I was kind of reminiscing on what we'd do together: We'd golf together and swim together in his pool in the backyard.
  
  Monty was the one who had the idea that you just wish you have five more minutes with them; he had the idea for the song, and I said, yeah, man, that's the title. We wrote the song around that - tried to make it pretty autobiographical and pretty relatable to the folks out there."
• The studio version of the song was released on May 5, 2017. Scotty said: "Fans have been asking me for months to release it. When Frank, Monty and I got together to write, we talked about all those moments we could've used five more minutes to say 'I love you' or 'goodbye'… it poured out. Now we can get it out to fans on Friday, May 5. 'Five More Minutes' on 5/5… it's fate."
• Scotty explained the song to Billboard magazine: "It goes through life [from] that kid that mom's yelling at for supper but he wants to play for five more minutes to that kid who has a girlfriend and is scared to kiss her and just wants five more minutes. It goes through life all the way 'til the end of life and just wishing you had five more minutes to do this or that or say this or that."
• The video features footage from McCreery's childhood, including the day he came home from the hospital. They are interspersed with intimate shots of him singing the song's touching lyrics.
  
  "This was the first time I had seen a lot of this home video footage. Having the chance to see both of my grandfathers again and to relive some of the experiences from my younger days brought both tears and smiles to my face," said McCreery." Just like the song, it brings back so many great memories. Jeff Ray did an incredible job of honing in on so many special moments from nearly 50 hours of home video footage. I'm very proud to share this with everyone."
• Scotty McCreery told ABC Radio for him, "Five More Minutes" is about the men who raised both of his parents.
  
  "For my Granddaddy R.P., my mama's daddy, fishing was kind of our thing," the singer said. "He'd take us out on the boat. He was very big on building his own stuff and fixing his own engines. And we were out on the boat, you know, a few times where the engine would break down and we'd have to flag somebody down to get it. But it was his boat, and we did a lot of fishing."
  
  "Me and Granddaddy Bill, our favorite thing to do was golf," Scotty continued. "He lived in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and that's kind of like the golf capital of the world. So in his retirement, he was just a ranger at a course down there, and we'd ride around and play golf together. So, I loved that."
• The song inspired a movie of the same title shot in 2021 for the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel. The TV film isn't a direct adaptation of McCreery's story. It follows a woman's Christmas wish after her late grandfather's journal turns up during the holiday season.
  
  Though McCreery doesn't appear in the Five More Minutes movie, he serves as an executive producer on the project.
• "Five More Minutes" represented a shift in McCreery's evolution as a songwriter. "I had just lost my Granddaddy Bill, and this might have been some of the first times I was really just straight-up writing from the heart," the country star told CMT Stages. "Like, writing from true, raw emotion, as opposed to writing for, 'Alright, what's radio gonna play? What's gonna be a hit?'"
• McCreery originally wrote "Five More Minutes" with childhood memories in mind, detailing the moments he wishes he could revisit with his late family members. McCreery now finds the song's message to be even more poignant since he became a father to his first child, Avery, in October 2022.
  
  "I think being a dad changes your perspective on a lot of things," he said. "For me, I think 'Five More Minutes' now, being a dad, it's like, 'Hey, man, live in the moment. Be there as often as you can be there, and try not to miss anything.' Because you don't wanna be down the road wishing you had that time because you missed out on it."