Songfacts®:

• This soulful rock ballad starts as an anti-love song partially inspired by the death of Steve Perry's girlfriend Kellie Nash in 2012.
  
  I'm so free, I need nobody
  No more lies, no surprises, no confrontations
  It's a peaceful life behind closed doors.
  
  However as the song builds, it lands somewhere completely different.
  
  When you told me you really want me
  I was all by myself, oh-oh, oh-oh
  Then you told me that you loved me
  And there is nobody else
  
  Steve Perry explained to Louder Sound: "It seems as though the subject is isolating himself from romance to avoid pain. But in the dark of the night there's nowhere to run; you're in the world, you might as well love anyway."
• For two decades until the release of Traces, Steve Perry made few public appearances, preferring to isolate himself from his fans. He explained in a press release that this song has a secondary meaning about his "own relationship with past isolation."
• Perry co-wrote the song from Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson, who's also worked with Adele, The Dixie Chicks among others. The former Journey singer recalled that Wilson sketched the song one afternoon at his condominium. Perry played bass and Wilson "the rolling guitar part." That became "a symphonic bed" for producer Thom Flowers' guitar solo.
• Booker T Jones supplied the Hammond organ parts, which was a fulfillment of a dream for Perry as "Green Onions" is the ringtone of his phone.