American Authors Debuts New Single “Go Big or Go Home”: Listen
Zac Barnett (vocals), James Adam Shelley (guitar/banjo), Dave Rublin (bass), and Matt Sanchez (drums) of American Authors has officially debuted their first single “Go Big or Go Home” from their much-anticipated sophomore album due this fall via Island Records. “Go Big or Go Home” is available for download now.
The new track “Go Big or Go Home,” which has been featured in this year’s NBA playoffs and finals promotions, and currently boasts with more than 214,000 YouTube views, is the band’s follow-up to their 2014 album, Oh, What A Life, which produced the hit singles “Best Day of My Life” and “Believer”.
Anatomy of a Song
American Authors’ Zac Barnett breaks down the making of “Go Big or Go Home”.
The Subject
“Go Big Or Go Home” is a song about going all in, 100% with everything you do in life. For us as musicians we would not be where we are today without putting all our energy, time, commitment and hard work into our music. When times were hard and people told us to give up, kept pushed through, stayed strong and “went big”.
The Background
We started with the hook idea of “Go Big Or Go Home”. It’s such a great phrase that we have all used at one point or another. From there we wanted to build a story around that, painting an image of doing big things, and whether they end up working out in the end is beside the point. As long as you are putting your heart and soul into what you love and having fun doing it, that’s all that matters.
The Writing
We kept rewriting this song over and over. There was something special about it but we wanted to make sure the song was exactly perfect for us. We always enjoy rewriting our songs until we can get them how we truly envisioned them.
The Song
We love that the song is so bare in a lot of the sections. We wanted to showcase the big group harmonies early in the song and give it a real sing-along sensibility. The chorus is simple and supplies such a big hook that we wanted the rest of the song to take listeners on twists and turns ideally doing things you may not expect on first listen.
The Video
For this album cycle, I really wanted to focus our photos, album covers, and this first video around the idea of living in a collage world. Our video will stylistically be similar to the “Go Big Or Go Home” album artwork, showing our journey through life in collage. So much of our last album and our second album that we are finishing up now deal with chasing our dreams and the sacrifices that we all make to follow the path life has planned for us. These collages represent the places we go and the emotions we have on that journey.
Credits and thanks to Mike Polans, Zac Barnett and American Authors
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