Songfacts®:

• "Tell Me" is the story of a teenage couple who run off to find their place in the world. They don't have a sensible plan, but they have each other, and that might be all they need.
  
  According to White Lion frontman Mike Tramp, it's in the vein of two other songs about young lovers stealing away: "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger and "Young Turks" by Rod Stewart.
• This was the follow-up single to White Lion's first hit, the ballad "Wait," which went to #8 in the US and garnered lots of airplay on MTV. "Tell Me" didn't do nearly as well, but the next single, the socially aware and heartstring-tugging "When The Children Cry," was huge, roaring to #3. All three songs are from the album Pride, released in 1987.
  
  The band was dispatched to tour for well over a year and had just two weeks to write their next album, Big Game, which didn't meet expectations. The biggest hit from that one was "Little Fighter" at a disappointing #52. The group released another album in 1991 before calling it quits the following year.
• The original title was "Lambs And Lions."
• In a Songfacts interview with Mike Tramp, he called this song a "Romeo and Juliet in the modern day." The lyric was dictated by the music, composed by White Lion guitarist Vito Bratta. "This song is so strong and melodic, and such a positive, upbeat and singalong song, that it cannot have a political or 'I'm not having a good time' kind of lyric," Tramp said. "It's almost forbidden that you go in and ruin the positive mood of the song by saying too many things."
• White Lion's music videos weren't very creative, but they had a great look. The "Tell Me" video is a quick-and-easy performance video on a soundstage. Bands like Van Halen and Bon Jovi could pull these off, but White Lion came off a bit sterile. Mike Tramp and Vito Bratta had great musical chemistry but weren't good friends and had very different upbringings - Tramp is from Denmark and Bratta from Long Island. And they didn't cause much trouble, so there wasn't that element of danger that grabs headlines and promotes a swagger. They compensated for image deficiency with musical talent, but that wasn't enough to survive the grunge era.