Songfacts®:

• The title track of Ballerini's second album, she calls "Unapologetically" her first "proper love song." She wrote it three weeks after meeting fellow country singer Morgan Evans; the couple were engaged by the time the album was released.
• When she started working on the album, Ballerini tried to retrace the steps she took when recording her debut, The First Time, but she realized she was in a very different place as a person and an artist. A breakthrough came when she decided to just be herself - unapologetically. When she came up with the song, she knew she had the title of the album as well. "When I wrote this song, I feel like that's what this is, it's every corner of who I am - happy, sad, good, bad," she told Nash Country Daily. "That's why I picked it as the album title."
• Ballerini wrote this song with Hillary Lindsey and Forest Glen Whitehead. Lindsey has written with heavyweights Lady Gaga ("Million Reasons") and Carrie Underwood ("Last Name"). Forest Glen Whitehead is a Louisiana native who co-produced Ballerini's first album and earned writing credits on the tracks "Love Me Like You Mean It," "Peter Pan," and four other tracks from the set.
• This track marks one of the first times that Ballerini has willingly penned a love song, as she's clearly not a fan of the genre.
  
  "I had the word 'Unapologetically' in my phone, and I thought it was going to be a big girl sassy anthem," Ballerini revealed, during an interview with Andi Summers from 92.5 XTU in Philadelphia "but that just wasn't where I was at in my life, and we made it a love song. It's one of the first ever proper love songs I've ever written."
• Ballerini debuted the song live with a colorful balloon-filled performance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on September 27, 2017.
• The Unapologetically album tells the chronological story of the two years since Ballerini's debut album, The First Time, as the singer gets over a heartbreaking breakup and gets engaged to Morgan Evans. Asked by Pop Crush how she decided on the album's concept, Ballerini replied:
  
  "I wanted people to listen to the whole thing. It's such a single-driven industry now. The only way you really get to know an artist is by listening to the whole record. I knew I wanted to do something. Then, when I was listening to the songs I wanted to put on it, I was like, 'Oh, I've written about my life, why not put it in order and let it be a chronological story?'"
• Ballerini's marriage to Morgan Evans ended in 2022. Her 2023 album Rolling Up The Welcome Mat finds her reckoning with their divorce.