Songfacts®:

• Monroe penned this raucous cut when she was a teenager. It tells the tale of a woman who is fed up with romance and longs to spice things up with her significant other. Monroe recalled to The Boot: "When I wrote that song, I was 19! We were laughing that whole co-write, with [writers] Sally Barris and John McElroy. I was saying, 'Let's just go there.'"
  She added: "People are either going to love me or hate me for it. But I'm going to sing about what I'm going to sing about. If people can't laugh at it or take a joke, they can listen to something else."
• Monroe's experiences as a member of The Pistol Annie helped give her the confidence to record such a bold song. "The Pistol Annies showed me that I'm not the only one who has these thoughts," she said. "I just have country in my soul. I can't apologize for that anymore. The Pistol Annies has given me a boost of confidence, or reaffirmation, that it's OK to be original and to be you, because people will accept it."
• Producer Vince Gill began work on Like a Rose by listening to Monroe's catalogue, which the singer had been compiling since she was 14 years old. Gill exerted a little bit of pressure for her to record this unconventional love song. "I said, 'We do this song or I'm walking!'" he remembered, with a smile. "I would hate to see them miss the boat because it's talking about pot or whatever. The humor in it is outstanding, and that's more in line with the rowdy side of The Pistol Annies."
• Monroe explained the song's origins during a listening party for Like a Rose: "I talk to myself a lot, in my head," she said. "On the way to this writing session, I heard, 'Give me weed instead of roses.' I got real tickled. Sally's just a beautiful writer, a beautiful singer, beautiful soul from Minnesota. But she's real dainty. [John] is not dainty [laughs]. He's hardcore. So, I went in and I said to them, 'I just heard the craziest thing in my head: 'Give me weed instead of roses.' John was like, 'I love it!' and Sally said [affecting a 'dainty' voice], 'Oh, that's funny.' So we wrote this song."
• The music video finds Monroe and her band performing the song on a set designed to appear like that from a 1970s TV show. "I wanted to do something performance-driven that was light and fun and not literal," director David McClister explained. "We were able to locate several vintage video cameras from the era [Ikegamis]. Using the cameras from the period gave us a look unlike anything currently on television. I wanted our finished video to feel like an artifact from 1971 – an archival piece of video that had been re-discovered from the vaults of a local TV station."
• The colorful suits that Monroe and her band members wear in the video were designed created by legendary Nashville tailor Manuel. The "Rhinestone Rembrandt" has created clothing for many of music's biggest stars, from Kid Rock to Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash.