Songfacts®:

• In this song, Andress recalls drunken, violent, moronic events from her relationship with an unnamed bozo, before wishing him the best. In the chorus, she defines "the best" as "the best drinks hurt you in the morning" and "the best teams still end up losing" - basically all things that sound great but actually suck in the end.
  
  In her interview with American Songwriter, Andress said, "It came from toxic boyfriends. I drew from that energy of that experience of wishing someone ill will, because luckily since then, I've had breakups where that's not the case and I actually wish them the best, but this was from my toxic era when I was just like, 'But I hope nothing good happens to you.' Honestly, that song was written from a place in my 20s, but now that I'm in my 30s, I'm like, 'I don't have that kind of energy to waste.'"
• Andress is a sarcastic person, to the point that her therapist and friends have had serious conversations with her about it. "My friends and my therapist say I'm too sarcastic," she said, "so I would say this song's tone is very 'me' in that way." In "All The Best" she's summoning all her powers of sarcasm.
• But the song isn't ONLY a sarcastic "needling song" as Bob Dylan called them. It also shows a different sort of breakup than that he dealt with in many songs. Usually breakup songs are about despair or rage, but "All The Best" is more playful, more about simply reaching that point of exhaustion after dealing with endless little idiocies. It's a yawning shoulder-shrug of a "goodbye and get out" (since we're talking Dylan, its spirit can be compared to his "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right").
• Andress thinks of herself primarily as a songwriter. In true Nashville tradition, she does a lot of her writing as part of a team, working especially with Sam Ellis and Derrick Southerland. But she wrote "All The Best" on her own. Her first mentor was Kara DioGuardi, who has won too many awards to fit politely on this page. Andress started studying songwriting after taking a poetry class and being told she had talent, which she never realized. She studied at Berklee College of Music and met DioGuardi there. Andress has expressed annoyance that her career is taking her more onto the stage and out of the writing room where she feels most natural.
• "All The Best" was released as a single from Andress' third album. Talking about the album, Andress told American Songwriter, "Writing this album, I realized how much I've grown in the fact that I don't mind saying those uncomfortable things anymore, which is great because it shows that I'm trying and growing. And so that was encouraging for me to realize that I was no longer scared to say things that really help the song and help people understand you more because I think that's the whole goal of writing. Music for me is wanting to connect and wanting to be understood and want to help others feel more understood, and so if you're keeping out details from people, it's like you're not really being honest with them."