Songfacts®:

• This '80s-country throwback, which David Nail co-wrote with Troy Verges and Scooter Carusoe, was inspired by his spouse, Catherine's resoluteness during a difficult patch in their marriage. "When I met my wife and I proposed to her, I really naively thought, 'Okay, I know all there is to know about [her], and three or four years into our marriage, we hit a really rough spot," he revealed to. ABC Radio. "There were so many moments where I would come home from the road and be like, 'Is this the Sunday morning her car's not in the driveway?'"
  
  "Not only was it always in the driveway, but she would literally be in the living room like, 'Hey! We're dealing with this. Head on! I'm here," Nail continued. "We're in this for the long haul.' You know, 'We're gonna fight for this!' So that's what the song is about. It's like, 'I thought I knew everything there was to know about you, but I never knew I had a fighter.'"
• The song holds Catherine up as an unshakable supporter – even when Nail was at his worst. "'Fighter' is about as honest as I've ever been in a song," the singer admitted. "I mean, when you're quoting your wife saying things that are not pleasant [about you], you know it was our story. But it also, I think, tells the story of me."
• The song was partially inspired by a chick flick - The Notebook. "I'm comfortable enough in my own skin to acknowledge that The Notebook is one of my favorite movies," Nail admitted to Rolling Stone. "One of my favorite scenes is when Noah [Ryan Gosling] is telling Allie [Rachel McAdams], 'Hey, we fight and you're a pain in the ass 99 percent of the time, but that other one percent is what motivates me and makes me love you more.'"
• It was David Nail's wife who pushed for the song to be the album's title cut. "She told me, 'Nothing you have ever done in your career has come easy.' She just kind of went through the series of my professional ups and downs," he explained to Billboard magazine. "She told me, 'You've had to fight for everything in your career, to stay relevant. That is why it needs to be called Fighter. It just symbolizes your career.' I have to give her credit. She gave me a lot of clarity on why the song was significant."