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."