Hear Emo Powerhouse Mayday Parade’s Tender New Single
Mayday Parade are all about big emotional payoffs, though they take many different routes to that destination. The Florida band excel at anthemic, emo-inflected rock — like the mixture of fun. and Say Anything heard on 2013’s excellent “Ghosts” — but in the vein of the Eighties glam gods, they’re unafraid to season their records with heartfelt, unadorned ballads. We’re premiering one of the latter here, a new single from Black Lines, the band’s upcoming album, due October 9th.
The new song starts off sounding wistful, mirroring its theme of a breakup, but builds to a cathartic guitar solo. “If you’re letting go, lay me down softly,” sings frontman Derek Sanders; appropriately, the words in the above lyric video disappear at a gradual pace.
“‘Letting Go’ is a song about self pity and not having the strength to get over a bad relationship,” Mayday Parade guitarist Brooks Betts told Rolling Stone in a statement. “It’s about that weird spot when someone breaks you down even though you know they’re toxic. When you tried so hard for someone who was never going to let you in, knowing it’s going to end soon and preparing for the end.”
“Letting Go” is the third song the band has premiered from Black Lines, their fifth full-length, which arrives in conjunction with a 10th-anniversary documentary. Mayday Parade previously unveiled a pair of hard-driving tracks — “Keep in Mind, Transmogrification Is a New Technology” and “One of Them Will Destroy the Other” — and kicks off a U.S. tour in support of the album on October 14th.
“When we went into writing Black Lines, we felt like we wanted to try something new and fresh,” Sanders told Rolling Stone. “We pulled our inspiration from artists that we’ve always looked up to such as Jimmy Eat World and Third Eye Blind. Overall, on this album we went for more mature songwriting and created an album for ourselves and not just writing for our fans, we made music that is as true and meaningful as we could make it. To be working together as long as we have, you have to work with good people who are like minded, appreciate what they have, and not be afraid to try something different or hold back creatively. Our hope is to keep rising and to continually have fans connect with our music.”