Songfacts®:

• Miranda Lambert penned this poignant cut with her husband, the Country superstar Blake Shelton. It was inspired by the memory of Blake's older brother Richie Shelton, who died in a car accident in 1990. Miranda told Ladies Home Journal: "Blake's brother was killed instantly in a car accident at 24, when Blake was 14. One day he just opened up and was talking to me about it. And then he was playing this pretty little melody and we started adding words ... Later he said, 'I think it's better if you record it. Honestly, I don't think I can get through singing it every night onstage, so what's the point?'"
  
  She added: "I love that song, and I feel like it's time for me to show I have that side of me that's vulnerable and hurting for someone else."
• The Genesis of the song was when Lambert and Shelton were flipping through TV channels on a tour bus. They came across Shelton's Backstory on GAC, and listened to his father talking about his brother's fatal crash. The couple switched the TV off and started talking, the first time that Shelton had really opened up to Lambert about the tragedy. "Miranda never had a chance to meet my brother," Shelton told the Associated Press. "I was just a teenager when that happened. So I was telling her about him, what he was like, and we just ended up like we do sometimes, writing a song."
• Both Shelton and Lambert cried while writing the song. "That's the only time I've ever gotten that emotional writing a song, and him, too," said Lambert to Associated Press. "So, I think the initial emotion came out right that day, and I think you hear it in the lyrics."
• The line, "Your favorite records make me feel better, cause you sing along with every song. I know you didn't mean to give them to me," was pulled from Shelton's actual experience. "That's one of the things I got when my brother was killed. The family gave me all his albums and things like that," Shelton told The Associated Press. "I just listened to them over and over again to feel like he was there."
• This picked up the Song of the Year prize at the 2012 CMA Awards. Lambert and Shelton were the biggest winners at the ceremony with Lambert also being named Female Vocalist of the Year whilst her husband picked up the Male Vocalist of the Year gong as well as being named Entertainer of the Year.
  
  Although three married couples have been previously nominated for CMA Song of the Year Awards honors, Lambert and Shelton were the first husband and wife to take the prize.
• A version by contestant Cassadee Pope topped the iTunes chart after she performed the song on the singing contest show The Voice on which Blake Shelton serves as one of the judges. Her rendition also debuted at #25 on the Hot 100, outperforming Lambert's original release. Pope told Access Hollywood's Laura Saltman. "It was the story behind the song, the way I connected with it, Blake's connection with it. It's just such a great moment all around and at such a perfect time."
• This won both Song of the Year and Single of the Year at the 2013 ACM Awards. Miranda Lambert also picked up the Female Vocalist of the Year prize at the ceremony, her fourth consecutive win in that category.