Rise Against‘s “Nowhere Generation” has found a home at the top of the charts.
The lead single and title track off the punk outfit’s new album has hit number one on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Airplay tally, the first Rise Against tune to ever achieve that feat. In addition to boasting a rousing, instantly singalong-able chorus, “Nowhere Generation” the single gives Nowhere Generation the album one of its central themes with the line, “We are not the names that we’ve been given.”
“They were talking about resisting the urge to let somebody else define you, and define who you are,” frontman Tim McIlrath tells ABC Audio of the “Nowhere Generation” lyrics.
“Where you fit into the world, what the world looks like, what the world’s going to look like, whether you like it or not, the rules you have to play by to be a part of it,” he continues. “You know, ‘These are the things that we’ve done, so therefore these are the things you have to do to get where we are.'”
McIlrath wanted the song to reflect the real-world “rejection” of the idea of “letting previous generations define you, to name you.”
“When you take back your own definition and your own route to success, you kind of rename yourself, in a way,” he says. “You don’t let somebody else name you.”
Interestingly, the word “name” pops up in four other Nowhere Generation songs. Specifically with the song “Nowhere Generation,” McIlrath wanted the message to feel “a little more dangerous.”
“Like, ‘You keep calling me that, but that’s not who I am,'” he says.
Nowhere Generation the album is out now.
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