Songfacts®:

• This introspective song is about that period of time that precedes healing following the ending of a relationship. It was one of the last tracks Alessia Cara wrote for The Pains of Growing; she penned it when she was grieving after breaking up with a guy on bad terms.
  
  One day the thought of him won't hurt the same
  Won't need distractions to get through the day
  I guess I hope I'm gonna be okay
  'Cause I'm not today
  
  Speaking on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show, Cara explained she's unpacking how she was feeling after her breakup. She is recognizing that one day she'll be happy again, but it's fine to be sad for a period of time for a bit. The singer said:
  
  "There's a stage that we don't often talk about a lot or try to rush through, which is not very good, where you need to kind of grieve whatever you lost or whatever's going on and you have to just go through the period where you feel miserable and that's what this song is about."
• Alessia Cara explained in a video interview that when she wrote "Not Today," she was in a dark place following "probably the worst year I've had because of a bunch of collective things that put me there."
  
  Though she couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, her coping mechanism was to tell herself that "someday, it's going to get better."
  
  Cara recognized that the moment she stops believing in any hope in the future, that's when things get really bad. "So, although I didn't see it yet, I wrote that song as, kind of like an affirmation, like there would be one someday, and thankfully, there was, and I'm a lot better."
• Cara was listening to a lot of older blues songs, which influenced the way she wrote this tune. She explained: "I think the way people used to write back then is just like writing with no chorus and like the last line of every verse or the chorus - I always thought that was a really interesting way to write."