wAnt me back

This kiss-off anthem finds Lindsay Ell knowing her own worth in the aftermath of a breakup. You ain't gonna find nobody like me I'm the best you ever had and I'm always gonna be So if I were you, I'd want me back, too It's the fourth track on Heart Theory, an album that takes listeners through Ell's personal experience of the seven stages of grief after a difficult heartbreak. The songs on the album are broken up into seven stages: Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance; "Want Me Back" falls under the "anger" category.

Ell wrote the song with country star Kane Brown along with fellow co-writers Matt McGinn and Lindsay Rimes. Brown told ABC Audio he wanted to help the Canadian songstress pen something missing in her catalog. "I basically just said, 'You need to have that bad girl attitude that Carrie Underwood used to have, 'Before He Cheats' and all that. And, you know, Miranda Lambert used to have,'" he revealed. "Back then, they were basically doing what the guys are doing today. Just saying, like 'You need me,' basically. I was like, 'You just need to have that attitude.'" By the time they'd completed this tune, Brown was ready to record it himself. "I ended up loving the song and I told her, I was like, 'If you don't cut this, I'll cut it. I'm gonna have to change some lyrics, but I'll do it,'" he recalled.

Lindsay Ell dated radio DJ Bobby Bones for over a year in 2016-17 and their public relationship and split fueled many of the tracks on Heart Theory. Ell told The Boot the songs helped her process not just her one high-profile breakup, but every single breakup in her life. She says it helped her "learn things about myself, where I went right, where I went wrong."