Songfacts®:

• Colbie Caillat wrote this empowering piano ballad with Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. It was one of several songs that Caillat recorded with the R&B legend for her album. "He's one of my favorite producers," she told USA Today. "He can make any style production he wants. He's done Boyz II Men and all these R&B records, then he has worked with Barbra Streisand and Ariana Grande. Now, he's working with me."
• The song contains a message of self-love aimed at females. "It's exhausting being a woman," Caillat told Billboard magazine. "This song is not to say that we should never wear makeup, but to say that, sometimes, it's okay not to."
• Caillat explained the song's meaning to Radio.com. "['Try'] is about how us women feel like we need to change ourselves in so many different ways for people to accept us and like us," she said. "As much as we all hate that we allow that to happen, we still do it. Every day we wake up and change the way we look just so that we feel better about ourselves. Me and Kenny [Babyface] and Jason [Reeves], we were talking about that. We wanted a song that was honest and vulnerable."
• The lyric video features female celebrities like Sheryl Crow, Miranda Lambert, Sara Bareilles, Christina Perri, Hayden Panettiere appearing without makeup, to help prove Caillat's point. "I have a couple celebrity friends that would be more impactful for everyday people to see what we look like normally," said the singer.
• Caillat wrote the track about herself and is pleased so many others have responded to it. "It's this song I've had in my head my entire life about personal insecurities, imperfections, self-confidence issue," she told Billboard magazine. "I thought I was the only person who felt that way and now I release this song that so many people around the world are relating too, so many different age ranges, men and women. It makes me feel great that I'm not the only one in this situation. For them, hearing a song that speaks to them about something they've gone through, it connects us."
• The song's music video shows a number of women, including Caillat herself, gradually removing their makeup, wigs, and fake eyelashes and letting their natural beauty shine. Caillat said: "We shot the video in reverse, we started bare, and by the end we finished with the full hair and makeup, and then reversed the film for the finished product. All of the women were amazing."
  
  "My favorite was the woman who has no hair," she added. "I first saw her completely bald, no makeup, with a huge smile, she was just so happy and confident. She was so beautiful to me. And then we kept getting more hair and makeup on, and the next scene I saw where she's in full make-up and wig, I was like, Who is this woman? She was not the same person. She still looked beautiful but it wasn't the same beauty that I saw when she was liberated, showing who she really was."
• A duet version with Hillary Scott from Lady A appears on Caillat's 2025 album This Time Around. "I've known her most of my career, and she's got a kind heart and a beautiful voice," Caillat told the the Off The Record podcast. "She chose 'Try.' She had this beautiful idea for the bridge, came very prepared, and added these incredible harmonies. I love her."