[4] Lyrically, the album deals with relationships, growing up, self-examination, the importance and values of friendship, stereotypes of America, and staying true to oneself.

Only a few months after the release of their self-titled album, Forever the Sickest Kids lost their lead guitarist Marc Stewart due to his then-recent marriage and desire to go back and finish college.

The band self-produced the music videos for their singles "I Guess You Can Say Things Are Getting Pretty Serious", "Summer Song", and "Shut the Front Door (Too Young for This)".

[5] Under the new label, the band released a cover song of "We Found Love" by Rihanna for the compilation album Punk Goes Pop 5.

[2][7][8] In an interview with idobi Radio, Cook revealed that the album would be released on June 25, 2013 and one of the tracks was titled "Chin Up Kid".

[8] In another interview with Alternative Press, Cook revealed the titles of two more tracks called "My Friends Save Me" and "Nikki".

[4] On April 25, a preview of "Chin Up Kid" was released, along with the cover art, track listing, and title of the album, J.A.C.K.

Cook stated, "...there was a [part] of the album process where we did a couple co-writes in other studios, but a majority of those songs didn't get used.

[4] Vocalist and rhythm guitarist Caleb Turman stated that he and Bello were the primary songwriters, saying, "We would come up with the song concepts, the core melodies and even a lot of the lyrics."

Turman spoke of the track "Ritalin (Born in America)", revealing that it was written the night Stewart had departed from the band.

[3] A lyric video was originally posted on YouTube by Fearless Records on May 6, with the song being officially released as a digital download and available for purchase on iTunes the following day.

[9] The music video premiered on August 15 on fuse and consists of live footage of the band performing on Warped Tour 2013.

[24] The title of the album, J.A.C.K., was thought of by Cook and is an acronym of the four band members' first names: Jonathan, Austin, Caleb, Kyle.

He was inspired by the covers of the video game series Grand Theft Auto and had the intention to make the band look like comic book action heroes.

The woman featured on the back cover of the album was originally an image of Cook, but was changed after Burns added different effects to it.

"[27] Catherine Yi of idobi commended a few tracks, but felt that the album is "unclear about the message it wants to convey" and that it is incomparable to the band's past material.

[28] Hit the Floor Magazine said the album was a "good release" and that the band "[has] definitely grown and matured", but concluded that "the group [seems] a bit too comfortable with their sound..."[29] All songs produced by Mike Green.