Songfacts®:

• This direct plea to an all-too-reserved lover is a track from Feels Like Home, Sheryl Crow's first Country album. She told Billboard magazine: "I got into country music through the back door. We had two country music stations in my hometown, and they were oldies country - Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, to Waylon and Jessi. I gravitated to stuff like that and the Rolling Stones, the Flying Burrito Brothers. Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris - especially the stuff she did with Gram [Parsons]. 'Give It To Me' was inspired by that, with it's high drama, melodic feel. I think that was the inspiration for most of the big hits I've ever had."
• The song features harmony vocals from singer-songwriter/producer Vince Gill and Ashley Monroe of the Pistol Annies.
• Crow wrote this with her longtime songwriting collaborator and guitarist, Jeff Trott. In our interview with Trott, he remembered how the song originated: "Sheryl actually was singing this melody, and she wanted to do something like Loretta Lynn. She just started playing this thing, and then I started adding to it. It kept sounding like she was wanting to come out and say, 'just f--k me.' Like, just c'mon, give it to me, and I said, 'Well, why can't you just say it?' Like if you say 'give it to me,' that's saying the same thing.
  
  But in the song context, it doesn't really sound like that was the motivation. Even though that sounds really cheesy, and crass, we had never written anything really super direct like that."