The lyrics of the song are based on the poem "Fun" by Wyn Cooper. Cooper was inspired to write the poem by a conversation at a bar with a friend and occasional writer, Bill Ripley (died 2006, in which he said "All I want is to have a little fun before I die", which became the first line of the poem. In a 1994 interview, Cooper said: "The poem isn't really about him. Or me. They're different people. They're people you can sort of see as ... well ... objective correlatives. Symbols of people like us, or what we could have been, or what we would have become if we continued to drink and do nothing with our lives." Crow's producer (Bottrell) discovered Cooper's poetry book "The Country of Here Below" in a Pasadena, California, used bookstore. Crow had written a song called "I Still Love You" but was unhappy with its lyrics; she used its melody and adapted the poem for her lyrics to "All I Wanna Do". The song earned Cooper considerable royalties and helped to promote his book, originally published in a run of only 500 copies in 1987, into multiple reprints. After the song became popular, Ripley brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Cooper for some of the song's royalties, which ended their friendship.