Tim McGraw in many ways was, at least at one time, living out the life his mother, Betty D’Agostino, wanted for herself. The gifted student and athlete knew how important education was to her, especially since she missed her own high school graduation because she was pregnant with him. He was well on his way to becoming a lawyer, when he realized he would never be happy if he didn’t at least give music a chance.

“I was in college and I knew how bad she wanted me to go to college,” Tim recalled (via ABC Audio). “I was in pre-law and I was gonna go to law school and do all that stuff. I was a pretty good student coming out of high school, and I knew how bad she wanted me to do that.”

Finally, the Louisiana native mustered up the courage to call her, never expecting her response.

“I remember calling her — and getting up the nerve to call her — to tell her that I was gonna quit college and move to Nashville. And it took me a while to do that,” he recalled. “And when I told her, she just said, ‘I’m surprised you hadn’t done it already.’ And that was her way of just telling me, ‘Go do it.’ So, you know, she’s a big deal to me,”

Tim sings about his mother in his current single, “I Called Mama.” The song, from his just-released Here on Earth record, honors the struggles she faced as she raised Tim and his siblings.

“My mom was a strong woman, and she raised us three kids and went through a lot of abuse in her marriages,” Tim said in an interview with Blair Garner. “So we saw a lot of that growing up and saw a lot of the black eyes and bloody noses and all that thing around our house.”

It wasn’t until Tim was much older that he realized how much his mother had endured to make sure her children were taken care of.

“I remember being on our own and being at our home, and I was around 13 maybe, one night.” Tim recalled. “I got up late at night, it’s about two in the morning, and my mom had worked like three jobs at a time to try to keep the bills paid. And I remember specifically getting up one night to go get a glass of water and she was at our kitchen table, and she had bills spread out everywhere. She had her head down, she was crying and she didn’t see me walk by.

“I didn’t know what to say,” he continued. “It was just so heartbreaking to me . . . I don’t know that I really got it at that point. But older in life, I reflect on that a lot. I reflect on that scene and seeing my mom and how she hid that from us. And I just happened to catch that moment.”

Here on Earth is available at TimMcGraw.com.