Songfacts®:

• This thought-provoking track finds Joe Nichols communicating a strong message. He told Billboard magazine:
  
  "I can understand where this would be a little bit scary for some people, but this album had to have this song on there to be one of those deep moments. The song, to me, is a message that rings completely true for me. I'm sure it does for a lot of people. But, you never know what somebody is dragging around with them, what kind of pain they are going through, or the experiences they've had that makes them who they are. The last verse - about the guy who carried the cross up that hill for all of us. It's a really powerful message."
• Joe Nichols' label, Red Bow Records, asked him to change the lyrics to "We All Carry Something" before releasing it. The problem? The final verse mentions Jesus Christ.
  
  "These verses are very powerful," Nichols explained to Dillon Weldon on the Drifting Cowboy podcast. "We talk about a baby born addicted to alcohol, a boy that grew up in a trailer park and got roughed up by his pops... just heart-wrenching story after story. And the message is we all carry something. We're all carrying some stuff. And the last payoff verse was about Jesus. He carried that cross through those city streets for us. We all carry something, He carried it all."
  
  That verse was too specific for the label's taste. "One of the leaders said, 'We need a lyric change on this song and then we can potentially put this out as a single,'" Nichols recalled. "They wanted something a little more generic."
  
  Nichols refused. "That song would not be changed," he said. As a result, the label shelved it. The standoff didn't last forever: "We All Carry Something" finally surfaced on Nichols' 2017 album Never Gets Old.
• This wasn't the first time Nichols faced industry pushback over his faith. His 2004 Revelation album, written in the aftermath of his father's death, is filled with songs about grief and spirituality.
  
  "There's a lot of God on that album," he said. "In 'Revelation,' the big payoff line is, 'And there stood Jesus Christ in all His glory.' That's kind of a no-no sometimes. Some people in record label positions say, 'This would be great if you just took Jesus out of that.'"
  
  Nichols never did. "I've been approached many times with that," he said. "And every single time I've said, 'I would rather die a bloody death than do something like that.'"