Songfacts®:

• Over lush piano chords, Brent Smith sings about the mental struggles that Shinedown bass player Eric Bass endures. Bass produced and mixed the Attention Attention album. Smith, who wrote the lyrics, explained the song's meaning to Louder Sound:
  
  "Eric faces is what is considered to be clinical depression on a daily basis. Some days everything is great, some days the sky is falling in. Often he'll tell me he wishes he could unscrew part of his skull, reach into his brain and take that part of him out and throw it away. But it is a part of him, and he has to work with it. He doesn't have to like it, but he has to respect it. And as a band we all respect him because of it.
  
  It was one of the songs that took the longest to write because I was afraid what Eric was going to think. So this is the part of the record when a person has to have a heart-to-heart chat with themselves in that chair. It's a very conversational piece."
• Rather than going into a dark place, the intention behind the song's music video is to show a great deal of heart and give a lift. Brent Smith explained to The Huffington Post:
  
  "We wanted to make the video uplifting and not in a cheesy way. We don't want people to feel ashamed about what they're going through. You're not going to be defined by your failures. You're going to be defined by the fact that you didn't give up. The song is for the world in a lot of ways."
• Originally, Shinedown had planned to release "Kill Your Conscience" as the second single from Attention Attention, following the lead track "Devil." However, after Smith noticed the overwhelming positive response on YouTube to "Get Up," they decided to drop this song instead.
• Eric Bass had had the music and melody for "Get Up" on his phone since around 2016. When he started putting the song together with Brent Smith, the lyrics didn't come very quickly.
  
  Speaking with Ethan Jackson of the Topeka, Kansas radio station V100, Bass recalled they were four or five days into penning the words, and normally they're done writing lyrics for a song in two or three days. When he suggested they move on to something else, Smith hesitantly said he may have an idea. The singer was apprehensive to suggest it as it was "super personal" about Bass' issues with depression and anxiety, and how sometimes he won't leave the house for days.
  
  Smith sang the verse and half of a pre-chorus to his bandmate. Bass thought it "was very sweet" that he'd written a song about him and they came up with the "Get up, get up" hook "from just shooting melodies around with each other."