Selena Gomez explained the song's message of treating haters with kindness to Just Jared: "I think people won't even realize that their words are so meaningful and I think people need to hear that a little bit more," she said. "There's just a lot that happens and now with social media and how much access people can have to your heart and your feelings, it's a little frightening."

"And I think that it's very important to understand that if you combat it and don't give in to it, it will just make you feel so much better," Gomez continued. "I will have such a heavy conscience if I retaliate all the hate I get. Trust me, I want to, but I do feel like that's always been the best thing for me, is turning the other cheek."

The expression to kill with kindness means to to get what you want by being very kind to another person. Its original meaning was to overwhelm or harm someone with mistaken or excessive benevolence and the phrase originated as a 16th century proverb 'kill with kindness as fond apes do their young.' In 1607 Thomas Heywood wrote a domestic tragedy A Woman Killed with Kindness.

Selena Gomez said about the song during a Revival listening party: "Everybody needs to hear that. I know it's so much easier to be mean, maybe more fun sometimes. But being able to wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and know that you gave your best when people were coming at you at your worst - you just have to kill 'em with kindness."

Asked on a Twitter Q&A what her favorite lyric from Revival is, Gomez replied: "We don't have to fall from grace. Put down the weapons you fight with. And kill em with kindness."

Selena Gomez told Entertainment Weekly that the inspiration behind the song is pretty straight forward. "You have to wake up with yourself every morning, and people are going to give you their worst, and it's so easy to be mean," she explained. "I'm Latin; I can be mean, real fast, if I want. But I don't feel good about myself, and I think people need to hear a message like this."

The song soundtracked a 2016 Verizon commercial, in which Selena Gomez keeps exhorting a fan to "play it again."

Ahead of performing the song in Jakarta, Indonesia on July 23, 2016, Selena Gomez explained why the lyrics are so meaningful to her. "Because I get really frustrated. I get stupid sometimes. I say things that I don't mean or that come out wrong just because I care so badly," she admitted. "But the thing is, at the end of the day, no war in anger was ever won."

"I do know that deep down in my heart that I have to believe that we can love each other and always be kind no matter what it takes in us," Gomez added. "I believe that we can do that, no matter what."