This Ross Copperman, Ashley Gorley, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne penned song finds Owen singing about how "real life" ain't like what's on TV." Jake Owen said: "Everybody can put themselves in this song in one way or another. And I've been dealing with a lot of real life circumstances lately: my father's sickness, fatherhood, getting married. These are the things I wanted to sing about, and I know my fans can relate."
The cut came about when Owen found himself ruminating about the daily grind. He shared his thoughts with his album producers Shane McAnally and Ross Copperman. Jake Owen told McAnally and Copperman that he wanted to leave behind the fun-loving beach songs that have given him much of his success and start singing about the things that are most important to him in his life. "I'm 33, I'm married, I have a kid," he told Taste of Country. "My dad beat cancer. I've gone through a lot of real life situations over the last couple of years, and I said for me, on this record I want to get back to that. I want to get back to talking about things that are real to me, and real life scenarios." The two writers enlisted Ashley Gorley and Josh Osborne and wrote a song especially for the singer. "Next thing I know, a couple of weeks later, the two of them sent me this song that they wrote together called 'Real Life,'" Owen recalled.
The lyrics echoes some of the sentiments of Owen's 2013 single "What We Ain't Got." "In a world of materialistic things, everybody is constantly looking for what they don't have, as opposed to looking for what's real and what you have right in front of you," he told Rolling Stone Country. "That's what 'What We Ain't Got' touched on. 'Real Life' is about what we've got and what's real to us."
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