Songfacts®:

• "The Bullet" describes a mother burying her son who was a victim of gun violence. The Marc Beeson, Andy Albert and Allen Shamblin penned tune describes how the bullet symbolically keeps moving long after it has hit the target, ripping the hearts of the deceased's loved ones.
• The song does not specifically reference any particular shooting in American or world history. However, Underwood was partially motivated to record "The Bullet" for Cry Pretty by the Las Vegas Route 91 shooting.
  
  "It's a beautiful and powerful song, and I thought for a long time whether or not I was the one to deliver its message," Underwood told Stellar magazine. "Unfortunately, too many events have happened and not just on a grand scale."
  
  "But too many people are going to relate to it - whether in the military, if they're cops, or just people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time," she added. "It's a song that needed to be sung."
• "The Bullet" is about the long-running emotional impact of a death by shooting. However, because Carrie Underwood is white, southern and religious, people quickly jumped to the conclusion there is a political message behind it.
  
  "Immediately people said, 'Oh you have a song about gun control!'" she sighed to The Guardian. "It was more about the lives that were changed by something terrible happening. And it does kind of bug me when people take a song, or take something I said and try to pigeonhole or force me to pick a side or something. It's a discussion – a long discussion."