Glorious
by Macklemore (featuring Skylar Grey)

Album: Gemini (2017)
Charted: 23 49
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Songfacts®:

  • Macklemore is in a good place on this gospel-flavored positivity anthem. Released as the first single from his Gemini album, the song reflects the cheerful mood the Seattle native was in as he laid down the tracks.

    "I was happy and at home with my baby girl and my lady," Macklemore told ABC Radio, referring to his daughter Sloane and wife Tricia. "And [I was recording] downstairs in the basement and everything was just good. So I think there's definitely a certain spirit to the album that defines where I'm at in my life at this point."
  • The song features a gospel-inspired hook from Skylar Grey and it was the songstress who came up with the title. "I picked that word," Grey said. "The first time I heard his verses and I heard him say 'glorious,' I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's the title. That has to be the song.'"
  • The track isn't credited to longtime producer Ryan Lewis. Instead the instrumentation is supplied by Budo, who also worked on Macklemore's 2016 single "Wednesday Morning."
  • Skylar Grey didn't write the hook with herself in mind as a vocalist. She explained to Billboard:

    "I was thinking, you know, 'this is kind of gospel-sounding, it'd be dope to have like a gospel singer on it,' and I kind of wrote a little bit out of my range vocally. But it was just funny because a month later [Macklemore] hit me up and was like, 'I want you to stay on the song.' They liked the fact that my voice wasn't gospel, so it made it less expected with that type of melody, I guess. So I ended up staying on the song, and I had to practice a lot, playing it, to be able to perform it live - but I figured out how to do it.

    It's very rare that I write something thinking somebody else is going to be on it, and then I end up on it. Usually it's kind of the opposite, I write a song and I think I'm gonna sing it, and then somebody else takes it from me [Laughs]."
  • NBC teased the TV series Rise in 2018 with a promo featuring this song that aired during the Super Bowl.

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