Songfacts®:

• The title of this song came from a pet phrase songwriter Larry Burnett heard a lot when he was a child. In a Songfacts interview, he said: "I grew up with a mother who, whenever I was overdoing it over being upset about something, she'd kind of look at me and go, 'Oh, poor baby.' I hear women doing it with their kids these days, you know, a sarcastic thing. It's something I imagine many of us hear a lot. There again, it's already in people's minds."
• Burnett says this song is about adult women who don't have the temerity to get past a negative experience: "If you become familiar with the lyrics, the chorus, 'Poor baby, you're always needing more, baby, to even up the score, baby, from a long time ago,' it's like adult women who keep acting out. Adult men do it too," he laughs, "but I'm a guy, so I'm going to write about women. Women who keep acting out weird stuff throughout their entire adult life based on something stupid that happened that they never quite got over, that traumatized them when they were, I don't know, 8, 10, 12, 15, whenever it was."
• Having put his share of harsh personal experiences behind him, Burnett has little patience for someone who doesn't possess the courage to face their demons and get past them. But his wry sense of humor is very intact as he explains, "Do I have no sympathy? That would be a way to characterize it. At some point you've got to get over it. At some point you have to grow up. At some point you have to latch onto something that gives you forward motion, rather than hang onto something that keeps you standing still. So yeah, I'm a big fan of people outgrowing whatever. I would like to think I've outgrown my share, but you might find people who'd say, 'No, Larry hasn't outgrown any of that stuff.' But I've spent some time and worked on it, you know. You have to be vigilant. The first thing you have to do is know that you're an idiot. And then work on stopping being an idiot."