Courtesy of A Great Big World’s Facebook
You may remember their hit single “Say Something,” blasting across your radio, or perhaps you heard the Glee stars belting it out on Glee. Hey, even Christina Aguilera wanted to get in on the fun when she heard the song. But, A Great Big World has proved with their new song “Hold Each Other” that they are here to stay. In fact, the song celebrates all love, but they didn’t originally start with that song in mind.
“[Dan Romer, Chad King, and Ian Axel] were trying to work on another song and write another song, and it wasn’t happening. It was four hours later, and we still had no progress on it. And then, Dan was like let’s switch gears for a second, and he started playing theses chords on the piano. This song literally came out within two hours,” Chad said.
Ian explained that it’s “just a song about love,” which is what their upcoming album is full of. Because they are in a different place emotionally than during their previous album, it has a completely different vibe.
“It was a scary moment for me. I don’t know, it felt like I was exposing myself a lot in song, and that’s something I’ve never done before. It’s very easy to hide behind a pronoun like ‘you’ or talking even about a girl. It’s a lot easier to run away from your truth, at least in the pop music world,” Chad explained.
They—Chad and Ian—were debating whether or not Chad should sing “him” in the song, but ultimately they decided to let him run toward his truth.
“Let’s run toward the thing that we are afraid to do, and it’s so crazy we are afraid of our truth to begin with. Those are the things people are going to love about you the most. That’s how you’re going to connect with people,” Ian said.
Besides for Chad opening up about his sexuality, their new album is much more beat driven. Ian explained that “it fits much more into the pop world than our other album did.”
In addition to working on the album, they are also working on a Broadway musical, which has been an ongoing project for years already. Primarily, the show is about family, and they are going to a director any day.
“We actually have no idea when it’s going to go up, but it’s going to go up as soon as humanly possible,” Ian said.
A big thanks to Chad and Ian for taking the time to answer a few of our questions. Be sure to check out A Great Big World’s new single, and keep an eye out for more information about their Broadway musical!