The song, which he wrote with Zach Crowell, Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, and Charlie Handsome, is about the loneliness felt after a break-up.

Co-writer Zach Crowell told Taste of Country that "It was an idea that Sam brought and we chipped away at over the course of a handful of different writes."

The two then presented the idea of "Downtown's Dead" to Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, who experimented with different sounds before deciding to make the lead instrument an acoustic guitar.

The lyrics take inspiration from a breakup that Hunt had with his wife, Hannah, and it expresses the loneliness that the narrator feels when by himself in a public setting.

[2] The song was described by Rolling Stone as featuring a "woozy Latin guitar riff" and a "hungover narrative about a city that no longer holds the same charm it once did.