Songfacts®:

• The Neighbourhood vocalist Jesse Rutherford lost his father when he was young. This song finds him empathizing with a "little girl" whose has a dysfunctional relationship with her papa. Rutherford finds solace in commiserating with someone who's also got "daddy issues."
• The Neighbourhood recorded this track for their second album, Wiped Out! The passing of Rutherford's dad significantly impacted the record. It starts with 30 seconds of silence as a tribute to his father; references to his loss also appear on "Greetings from California" and "R.I.P. 2 My Youth."
• Previously, Rutherford had been reluctant to reference losing his father in his music. "I've never talked about my dad before," he told Digital Spy. "Since he died it was a thing obviously, but for some reason I wasn't like, 'Daddy's gone, I'd better write these songs'. I wrote one a long time ago but never did anything and it wasn't that great."
• The Neighbourhood bassist Michael Margott gave Rutherford the lines:
  
  You ask me what I'm thinking about
  I tell you that I'm thinking about
  Whatever you're thinking about
  Tell me something that I'll forget
  
  The lyrics came from a conversation when Rutherford, Margott and his girlfriend were doing mushrooms in Malibu. She asked Margott what he was thinking about, and he responded, "Whatever you're thinking about." Rutherford thought his answer was really cool. "Sometimes that's true," he told Spin. "You can't really explain to someone what you're thinking about, but, even if it's nothing, if you're sharing the moment with them, it's like, you're both thinking about the same s--t, whatever it is."
• The Neighbourhood released "Daddy Issues" as the second single from Wiped Out! At the time there was lukewarm interest in the track, but in late 2020 it went viral on TikTok, garnering a new streaming high.