Songfacts®:

• Our lives rarely unfold the way we pictured them, but they all end the same way: burned out like cigarettes.
  
  Baby Fuzz told Songfacts about the lyric: "There wasn't a specific person or reference for the lyrics of 'Cig.' I just wanted write a narrative song about a few different Americans whose lives didn't end up how they planned them.
  
  Each verse talks about a different person. The first verse is a girl who moves to New Mexico to start a new life. The second verse is a former high school quarterback who works at the gas station, and the third verse is me. I did that to illustrate that everyone's life ends up differently than how they planned. It's more of an affirmation that it's OK, and that even the most 'successful' or 'fulfilled' lives end the same way ultimately. It's nihilistic, but with the intent of cheering everyone up."
• Baby Fuzz is Brandon Lowry, who got his start as a songwriter/producer working with Dano Omelio as Robopop. Their song "Stereo Hearts" got picked up by Gym Class heroes, and with production by Benny Blanco and a vocal by Adam Levine, became a massive hit in 2011. As Baby Fuzz, he bucks convention with a look and sound that can be downright absurd at times. "Cig" is one of his more poignant and restrained songs, and one of his most popular, especially on Spotify where it's earned over 2 million streams.
• The cigarette theme shows up in the music video, which shows a series of people from different walks of life smoking. Baby Fuzz told Songfacts: "The people in the music video for 'Cig' are just a bunch of my friends. I invited a pile of people over one day and told them each to smoke a cigarette or other smokeable thing in front of the camera for a few seconds. I was living in New Jersey at the time, so a few of them are local folks from the neighborhood I was staying in. The little kid (who is eating a candy cigarette) kind of stole the show, though.