Songfacts®:

• Kacey Musgraves penned this portrait of the dead end life of a small town waitresses with big dreams and big mouths with Shane McAnally and Luke Laird. "We were just sitting there trying to picture these waitresses just sitting around talking about people and smoking and waiting on customers to come in," she told Radio.com.
  
  Musgraves added that she is not poking fun at anyone in particular, but the protagonist Brenda is a character from her imagination. "We always like to put characters in the song like Brenda, ol' Brenda," she explained with a smile. "Well, Brenda she's given up smokes, but now she's eating cake a lot."
• The rhythmic Country-Blues track credits Waffle House for diner noise. Musgraves said they wanted what the listener is hearing to line up with the greasy spoon diner she's singing about. "We went to Waffle House and Luke [Laird] put his iPhone out on the counter and just pressed record during breakfast and got the lady calling orders and plates being washed and stuff," she said.
• The song's music video was filmed in LA in April 2013, and was shot by a director named Honey (Kings of Leon/Kesha). The clip is set in a local diner with Musgraves and fellow waitresses getting through the day in their trapped, dead-end jobs.