Songfacts®:

• Silk Sonic is a R&B duo comprising Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak. They first met when Paak was the opening act for Mars on the European leg of his 2017 24K Magic World Tour. They got on well, so they decided to see if they could turn their backstage banter into songs. This soulful slow jam was the first tune they wrote together.
• During that European tour, Mars came up with the phrase "smoking out the window," imagining an anxious man puffing cigarettes as he tries to escape his stressful circumstances. The four words became a recurring in-joke, and when he and Paak got to the studio, it morphed into a hook.
• Mars and Paak came up with this retro-soul track where the pair outline a promiscuous love interest who is seeing other men. The gold-digging girl is taking advantage of their generous nature and breaking their hearts.
  
  You got me smokin' out the window
  Singin' how could you do this to me?
  I thought that girl belonged to only me
  But I was wrong, 'cause she belong to everybody
  
  "Basically the song is just about a man going through it, and you can hear him being emotional," said Mars to Audacy's Julia. "Saying some heinous things, but really he's begging, begging for it back."
  
  "His pride is hurt, his heart is broken," Anderson added. "You know sometimes when you leave the door open... she might have you smokin' out the window."
• When the tour ended, the pair's sessions ceased as both artists moved onto other projects. They reconvened in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, after Mars listened back through their files. He told Rolling Stone "it hit the right chord," so he called Paak and asked him to come to the studio. The two had so much fun in that session, they carried on collaborating.
  
  During lockdown, Mars and Paak's "quarantine passion project" became their An Evening with Silk Sonic album. They released this song as the third single from the record on November 5, 2021.
• Silk Sonic sang "Smoking Out The Window" live for the first time at the 2021 American Music Awards on November 21, 2021. Clad in coordinating red suits, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak opened the ceremony with their performance.