Songfacts®:

• This traditional-flavored duet by Tim McGraw and his wife Faith Hill was debuted during the ACM Awards in Las Vegas on Sunday April 6, 2014. The two have performed together before, taking home four ACM awards for 1997's "It's Your Love." Other hook-ups between the couple include McGraw's "I Need You" plus Hill's "Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me, " "Let's Make Love" and "Like We Never Loved at All."
• The song was co-written by Tom Douglas, Jaren Johnston, and Jeffrey Steele. Other collaborations between the trio include Keith Urban's "Raise 'Em Up." "We wrote over at Steeley's place, and if I remember correctly. Tom came in with that title," Johnston recalled to Roughstock. "It was a different play on it, and I can't remember exactly how it was, but once we started working on it, it evolved into 'Meanwhile Back at Mama's.'"
  
  "The most exciting part for me was that thing at the end," Johnson continued with a smile. "We had pretty much written the whole thing. We all knew it had to be some sort of twist on it, just because it was too good of a song to just end it normally. I sputtered out me and you back at mama's. We all kind of looked at each other and got quiet, and we were like oh my gosh, that is genius! Then we wrote that whole last chorus."
• The song's music video mixes clips from McGraw and Hill's performance at the ACM Awards with footage of the couple in a relaxed setting on their family farm just outside of Nashville.
• Speaking with Taste of Country Nights host Sam Alex, McGraw said the song instantly drew him in. "Singers come and go, careers come and go, but the songs last forever," he said. "You really have to focus on the songs, and when I heard this song instantly I loved it."
  
  "I mean within the four measures, I knew I was going to record this song," McGraw continued. "The second time I heard it, I played it for Faith and she instantly loved it too, and I asked her if she'd sing it with me, and she said she would."
  
  "The cadence of the songs, the cadence of the lyrics … I knew I had a good idea where it was going to head when I heard it," the country star added. "I knew it was gonna be real nostalgic and it was gonna be like a warm blanket and I knew I wanted to record it."
• Tim McGraw had a less-than-ideal childhood, growing up believing his stepfather, Horace Smith, was his father until discovering at the age of 11 that his biological father was in fact baseball player Tug McGraw. Asked by Taste of Country how someone with such a background could relate to a story that relies on the familiar comforts of home, McGraw replied: "Either you have a memory or a connection to that bucolic, sort of idealized childhood, or home that you grew up in or you wanna have it."
• This won Song of the Year Award at the 2015 Taste of Country Awards. It was McGraw's second straight win at the ceremony as "Highway Don't Care" was victorious in 2014.
• The song wasn't written as a duet. "We just wrote a folky thing," Jaren Johnston, recalled to Radio.com of the tune. "[Big Machine Label Group President] Scott Borchetta said, 'You know it's going to be a duet, right?'" And I was like, 'Who are they going to get?' I had no idea. He's like, 'Faith's going to sing on it.' I was like, 'Score! Touchdown!'"
  
  McGraw knew right away that it was the perfect song to record with his wife. "I got home, I walked into the house, and I said, 'Faith, you've got to hear this song,'" the singer said. "So I played her the song, and when it got to the end and it said, 'Me and you back at Mama's,' a flood of tears just came down from her eyes."
  
  "I said, 'Not only am I going to cut, but you're going to sing it with me,'"McGraw added. "And that's how it was born, right there."