Shinedown singer Brent Smith spoke to Rock Sound at this past weekend’s Download festival at Leicestershire, United Kingdom’s Donington Park and talked about the band’s latest singles, “Three Six Five” and “Dance, Kid, Dance”, and how it’s diversified the band’s fanbase. “That’s the big principle of everything that we’re doing. ‘Cause I think some people are, like, ‘Oh, you’re doing the single thing.’ And it’s, like, no, we’re doing what we feel is necessary. Coming off the last two albums as, essentially they’re concepts, so we’ve spent a lot of time in the studio working on songs for what they need to do and speak to us when we’re looking at the broad aspect of who Shinedown is and the audience. Again, we wanna grow the audience. That’s why ‘Three Six Five’ and ‘Dance, Kid, Dance’, they’re completely two sides of the band. We’re also gonna be releasing two more singles in late July. (We) should be announcing the record in November of this year, and then hopefully by March of next year, the record will be out. But a lot is going on right now. And we’re just happy to still be doing what we do. But we’ve also said it pretty straightforward: we’re very proud of the last 20 years; we’re focused on the next 20 years and beyond.”
As for how far along the album is? You’ll love this: “85 percent. A couple of songs that we are still in a writing phase with. ‘Cause that’s the thing — you’ll go in… Again, too, we appreciate our record label, we appreciate the fanbase that’s continuously growing. They always allow us to be ourselves. So when we’re in there, obviously you have a bit of a schedule that you need to keep — you have deadlines; there’s a timeframe for what have you — but you can’t rush the art because it’s forever. And we still believe that the album is the most important element of all of this, and all those songs need to live on that record, and you really have to make sure that you’ve basically gone to the wall on all of it and done your absolute best, and then the public will tell you how you did.”
Shinedown started their “Dance, Kid, Dance” tour last month at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa. The 36-date tour is one of the biggest tours (and venues) the band has ever done. They’ll headline some huge room, including Madison Square Garden (July 20), Boston’s TD Garden (July 19), Los Angeles’s Kia Forum (August 3) and more. Beartooth and Bush will be on select dates, Morgan Wade supports all shows.
2025 has been a big year for Shinedown, recently wining two trophies at the iHeartRadio Music Awards: “Rock Artist Of The Year” and “Rock Song Of The Year” for “A Symptom Of Being Human”.
The band’s “A Symptom Of Being Human” hit nearly 125 million global streams and charted at five radio formats, including a #1 at Active, Top 10 at Alternative, Top 10 at AC, Top 15 at Hot AC and a Top 20 at Top 40.
If that’s not enough, Shinedown’s latest single, “Dance, Kid, Dance”, has made history, reaching #1 on the Mediabase Active Rock chart, which marks their 22nd song to reach the pinnacle of the chart. 22 SONGS!
Shinedown. Massive band with zero signs of slowing down. Damn. Can any band catch them??!
