The Lumineers are singing the “Same Old Song” all the way to #1.
The lead single off the “Ho Hey” outfit’s latest album, Automatic, has reached the top spot on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. It marks the sixth Lumineers track to hit #1 on the ranking.
In writing “Same Old Song,” frontman Wesley Schultz tells ABC Audio that he was thinking about the importance of music, especially coming out of the concert shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Music as a whole, as a huge part of my life, was always the way to feel something, the antidote to the modern place we’re in, which is numb everything at all times,” Schultz shares. “Music makes people cry still, it does all these things that all this technology can’t really touch.”
The track’s lyrics also reflect Schultz’s relationship with sadness as he sings, “We sing the same old, same sad song.”
“You’re having a really lousy day, I was sort of raised in a house where you try to remind the person, like, why it’s not bad,” Schultz says. “I never felt seen by that. I was always like, ‘What?'”
His outlook started to change when he and his wife began their relationship.
“When we first started dating, she’d say, ‘Yeah, it just really sucks, doesn’t it?'” Schultz recalls. “Like, whatever I was dealing with. And suddenly I was like, ‘Yeah!’ And I got to move on from it.”
He adds that embracing his sadness through sad songs often makes him feel better.
“Hopeless expressions make me feel like, ‘Oh, I’m not alone in this lonely world,'” he says.
Automatic is out now. The Lumineers will launch a U.S. tour in support of the album in July.
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