Yeah, the signing and then the dropping and then the resigning was very unique. I was signed to Atlantic Records over two decades ago with another band. I was dropped by Atlantic Records and then I was called back by the A&R guy, a gentleman by the name of Steve Robertson at Atlantic Records who is still Shinedown’s A & R rep to this day. It has a lyrical theme about not letting people tell you that you won’t succeed at your dreams – I am guessing that some of this could have been inspired by your first experience with getting signed and then dropped, before starting Shinedown? “Fly From The Inside” was your first single and it was the leadoff song from Shinedown’s debut, Leave A Whisper. Everything that’s good has a little bit of bad and everything it’s bad, has a little bit of good, it’s balance. It’s why we named the band Shinedown in the first place. You know, we’ve often said that a lot of Shinedown music is about the yin and the yang. It is about having confidence in yourself and just refusing to kneel. But the song is about overcoming obstacles. I didn’t realize it was gonna be to this magnitude. I felt like the song would see the light of day, eventually. It’s just that the time I guess it just didn’t necessarily belong on that particular record. This was a song that didn’t make the album, not because it wasn’t good song. And I always loved the song when we were writing for the album Amaryllis. We wanted to show encouragement, confidence, and we wanted to put something out there that was a beacon of the human spirit. The band - myself and Zach and Barry and Eric.
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I just saw the fear in people’s eyes and I wanted to put something out into the world. So I have to preface “Atlas” with that because it’s very important why the song came out in the first place. We are closing in on almost four hundred thousand dollars raised since March of this year. The song was “Atlas Falls,” and we wanted to give one hundred percent of the proceeds to Direct Relief and aiding them during this pandemic. So once we had finally contacted them and we found our liaison, a gentleman by the name of Samir, I gave him the idea of I had a song that I wanted to attach to a T-shirt. Their main goal is to make sure that the men and women in the medical community, scientific community during times of crisis, whether it be poverty, a natural disaster or a pandemic, that they give these men and women the tools they need to save as many lives as possible. And Direct Relief is very essential and very important to “Atlas Falls,” because it was the song that I thought of when I came across finding out who Direct Relief is. I came across an organization called Direct Relief. And for me personally, I was trying to figure out a way to put optimism out into the world and also to help the medical and the scientific community during this time of crisis, because they were the ones that were battling - and are still battling - this virus. Five months ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, we were all thrust into a new world. That song is now coming to the light of day because of COVID-19. “Atlas Falls” was actually written during the Amaryllis writing sessions for that record, which was our fourth album.
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So, let’s talk about your latest #1 single, “Atlas Falls.” It seems to continue a long lyrical theme in your songs, about not backing down to adversity and about transcending your situation. So I will be the longest artist relationship she’s had. And once this is turned in, I’ll actually have one more than Jay Z. ” The Shinedown record that we’re working on right now is our seventh album with Atlantic. the only other men that I’ve had a longer relationship with is my husband and also Jay Z. And so it’s funny because when we were launching Attention, Attention, the label had an event for us and Julie Greenwald gets up and says, “The guy that I’m about to bring up here. We’ve become one of the longest standing artists on Atlantic Records.