Songfacts®:

• "Family Matters" is the second single from British singer-songwriter Skye Newman, following her debut track, "Hairdresser." The song is about familial relationships and personal resilience, drawing from Newman's own experiences growing up on a council estate.
• Newman hails from South East London, where she spent her youth shuttled between homes, absorbing the grim realities of working-class life. Her surroundings were peppered with instability and dysfunction, while her brother's struggle with substance abuse loomed in the background. And then there's the chorus:
  
  I could tell you about me but you won't understand
  
  The line reveals the entire alienating experience of trying to explain yourself to people who had normal childhoods with family dinners and dental plans.
• In an interview with BBC Radio 1's Sian Eleri, Newman explained that the song is both personal and universal, a lifeline of sorts for anyone whose idea of "family values" includes dodging emotional landmines and learning to self-soothe at an alarmingly young age. She said she's both happy and sad that people relate: "sad for the sake of people understand that feeling and have dealt with that pain and whatever they've had to get through. But happy that I can write something that makes them feel at ease that they're not alone in that issue."
• As with "Hairdresser," Skye Newman worked with producers Boo and Luis Navidad on the track. The song's stripped-back arrangement allows Newman's raspy vocals to do the heavy lifting. There's no need for gloss when the lyrics cut this deep.
• Skye Newman's family feel the same way as the singer. "It's like we're all kind of in it together," Newman told Apple Music's Rebecca Judd. "As much as we're all a nightmare, it works because we all understand. We've all had our own hell in each of our own ways and we've dealt with it in different ways, but we've all kind of had the same feeling nonetheless."
• "Family Matters" climbed to #5 on the UK Singles Chart, building on the momentum of "Hairdresser," which peaked at #16. With both songs landing inside the UK Top 20, Newman became the first UK female solo artist since Ella Henderson in 2014 to see her first two singles achieve that feat.
• One of the "family matters" Newman sings about is drug abuse in her home.
  
  At school, weed was my perfume
  Then my brother's drugs got harder
  It became substance abuse
  So he's a stupid bastard
  
  "We all just tried to love him, because that's all you can do," Newman told The Guardian. "It's weird to grieve for someone who is still alive."