Songfacts®:

• This spiritual ballad started life with a muffled sample of "The Last Words of Copernicus" by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers.
• The song was created in collaboration with M.I.A.'s production partners Diplo and Dave "Switch" Taylor. This was one of three tunes Diplo created for MAYA, and he told MTV News that it is one of his favorite tracks from the album. "'Tell Me Why' is great," he said. "It's a big, kinda giant-sounding record. It sounds like some Wall of Sound, Motown kind of thing."
• Diplo claimed in an interview that, following the break-up of his personal relationship with M.I.A. some years earlier, he was not allowed to record at her house: "Her boyfriend really hates me... Even if she hates my guts, she knows that we can do crazy stuff together. The sound on her records is unlike anyone else's, and we all take that very seriously."
• Diplo was asked by a fan via Twitter why, at the end of the track "does it sound like a toilet just flushed?"
  "Cuz rest of [the] album is a turd," he tweeted back.
  Naturally, his response quickly made the rounds on the Internet, though he was most likely just kidding around.
• Diplo (from Billboard magazine) said: "I have the most success with established artists when they trust me. With M.I.A., working on the new record, I just wasn't feeling the vibe with some of the new producers. We did a record called 'Tell Me Why,' and I just knew what she was good at. It wasn't the same bunch of noise or talking about politics, because that's stuff people had heard. I wanted her to do something where she was singing and doing something louder, like Animal Collective-style music, because I think that's where she shines best. Even if an artist doesn't understand it at first, I'll show them that we'll improve in the end."