Tonight Alive unveil music video for “Drive” and reveal the struggles of writing a commercially popular song

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Paul 'Browny' Brown

Sydney’s pop punk heroes Tonight Alive are about to wrap up the Australian leg of their Limitless World Tour, which has seen them hitting the east coast reintroducing themselves to the country and gaining national commercial radio airplay for (quite possibly) the first time with their feature single “Drive” from forthcoming album “Limitless” which is out March 4th.

While the song itself isn’t as gripping and addictive in comparison to previous tracks such as “Lonely Girl“, “The Other Side” and “The Edge“, it’s still catchy enough to give you those road trip feels when you think you’ve been stuck in the same place for too long. But it seems we’re not the only ones who felt that way at first.

When we caught up with the band, front-woman Jenna McDougall described the song’s inception and eventual addition to their new album as a difficult task; revealing:

“It was really challenging to accept Drive; when we wrote it and when we were in pre-production trying to figure out does this have a place on our record, all of the decisions we were making were very fear based”.

“I was saying, ‘I don’t think this fits or I don’t think our fans are gonna like it. This is too far outside of what we’ve done in the past’ and that was my fear talking. The song is about rebelling against expectation and I don’t feel I’ve been untrue to myself in that song, but the whole album is about letting go of fear, expectation and limitation.”

Which of course once again falls into the category of bands trying new things to progress forward with their musical careers and experience, but she also opened up about the struggles of an established band finally cracking it on mainstream radio and making waves in the music industry with a catchy song by telling us:

“You really do have to fit into a certain category; you have to satisfy a very small group of people so the rest of the country or the world can enjoy it [your music] also. You’re really ticking so many boxes when you’re trying to fit the mould and I hope people recognise the lyrical content in the song, despite the fact it might be more commercial.”

I for one am completely stoked for the guys finally getting their music heard across the country on radio, which in-part will expose the band to more fans who didn’t even know they existed before this year. And like most of the songs you hear on the radio, I’m sure this one will eventually grow on you, once you focus more on the words being sung.

To celebrate their latest achievement Tonight Alive just released a music video to accompany the track which features the band high jacking a bus from a junk yard and picking up randoms (including backup dancers) along the way to take them to a big gathering, surrounded by more broken down vehicles where Jenna then proceeds to smash the windows of a car while fans cheer her on.

Get amongst it and help support the Australian Music scene. You can also hear our full interview with the band here. If you dig the new song too, you can purchase it on iTunes or pre-order the new album right here.