Songfacts®:

• 3 Doors Down lead singer Brad Arnold writes the lyrics to their songs, and on this hard-edged anthem about escaping to a better life, he got some help from his bandmates expanding the song. The group's bass player Todd Harrell told us, "That's one of our heavier songs we ever wrote. We were sitting around writing one day and Brad was talking about some southern rock songs, and 'Put me on a train, mama,' that just came out, and it was really cool. We took that line and ended up writing the whole song to 'put me on a train, mama.' That's a fun song to play."
• This song has an old-school Southern Rock feel to it. Guitarist Chris Henderson discussed its sound with The Toledo Free Press: "People have been trying to pigeonhole us as a Southern Rock band since the day we came out. We're really not that kind of band; we're pretty much a Modern Rock band. Our sound isn't Southern. There's a few swampy things here and there, but typically, it's universal and it works everywhere. With a song like 'Train,' when you hear it, it's a Southern Rock song, for sure. It's got all the typical things, and the lyric content is pretty Southern, too. But it still has the 3 Doors Down flavor to it, and we did something different that no other Southern Rock band does: We tried different tunings so it didn't sound Southern but still is. A lot of bands that are on the brink of being pigeonholed as Southern bands - we're not really on the brink, there's no chance of that happening to us at this point - but people still say it. So I think it took a little bit of balls to record that song."