Amnesia

Album: Front Row Seat (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Co-written by Josh Abbott with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, this is a track from Front Row Seat, an album which details the frontman's relationship and failed marriage with his ex-wife. This dark and trippy song, which finds Abbott wishing he could forget the love that went wrong was released as the record's lead single.

    "'Amnesia' is such a different song for us and it really is a way for us to come out of the gate and get some attention, let people see how we've matured,"Abbott told Rolling Stone. "It's so different from what we've done before, but it's still us. I was debating on its darkness, but I was just like, 'You know what, this album is mature. Let's put a mature song out first.'"
  • Josh Abbott elaborated to Taste of Country why the band chose this as Front Row Seat's first single. "This is a breakup song and we haven't put one of those to radio in a long time, maybe ever," he said. "I just thought that was a really cool song for fans to hear and go 'This is different. I like it. It's different. They've grown up a little bit.'"
  • Josh Abbott recalled penning the song with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne during a behind-the-scenes video. The co-write came one day after the same trio wrote "Hangin' Around" for the band's Tuesday Night EP. "I got there before Josh got there and I was there just hanging with Shane, and he said, 'You know I've always wanted to write a song about amnesia, but I feel like no one would ever cut a song like that.'"

    "After we recorded it, I wanted to create an intro for it because I thought that song was so special it deserved its own introduction, so there's an acoustic guitar riff that's playing eighth notes," Abbott continued. "I basically copied and pasted that for 52 bars and on the computer, and then the engineer and I went in there and grabbed little bits from the song and we randomly placed them in that, like randomly throwing darts at a board. And then I went in the studio and I was like, 'Man, just record what I say.' It took me two takes to say it the right way. That was a little emo or alternative - it's not country in the least bit, but I thought it was really artistic. I'm really proud of that."

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