What You Signed Up For

Album: Gravity, Drag Me Down (2002)
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Songfacts®:

  • Before she hit it big with Sugarland, Jennifer Nettles was an independent musician collecting accolades like the 2001 Independent Musician of the Year award from the Music Resource Group. While she has three acclaimed albums under her belt with the Jennifer Nettles Band, she doesn't perform the songs any more. In our 2010 interview with Nettles, she explained: "I really use my writing to be the snapshot of where I am, not only emotionally but also artistically. Consequently, what I'm drawn to are the things that are more current and more present, because those are the things that I'm either working out in myself, or those are the places that I am artistically currently that inspire me the most."
  • Telling us about this song, Nettles said: "I had written that at the time for my then-boyfriend. I was in my 20s at the time when I wrote that. And I loved that time of my life in writing, because I really used my writing as a purging, almost. The stage was a space for me, and the pen was a place for me to work out some of my own inner personal stuff. And obviously it still is, because I write from what I know, but what I knew then was much different than how I process it now.

    But at the time, that was a song that I wrote for my then-boyfriend, because I felt like I was presenting myself in a way of 'what you see is what you get' – so don't be surprised when you get a really sassy basket. (laughing) Because this is just what you signed up for! And thinking about the words now – it's so funny that you bring this up, because, God, I haven't thought about that song in so long. But you know, 'what if I stopped, what if I quit, what if I just threw up my hands and walked out on this s--t.' It was definitely a message to him, for sure."
    Nettles went on to explain that this relationship did not end here: it went on for years despite her warnings.

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