Songfacts®:

• Alabama Shakes returned to action in 2025 with their first tour since 2017 and their first original song since 2015: "Another Life." The group formed in 2009 with modest expectations, hoping to write some songs and maybe tour. They were thrilled when their 2011 EP got them a record deal and let them quit their tedious day jobs. Their 2012 debut album, Boys & Girls, went gangbusters and made a star out of frontwoman Brittany Howard. They released another highly acclaimed album, Sound & Color, in 2015, earning them three Grammy Awards. But after their 2017 tour, Howard was ready to go solo. Her 2019 album Jaime did well, but her next one, What Now in 2024, didn't get much attention. That December she reunited the band (minus drummer Steve Johnson) for a show in Tuscaloosa. They launched their tour on July 15, 2025 with "Another Life" in the set list. The song was released on August 29.
• The song finds Brittany Howard ending a relationship but hoping they can have another go in another life. The idea of meeting up again in the afterlife has been around for millennia, but this is more about parallel lives and alternate universes, a concept popularized in the 2020 book The Midnight Library.
  
  "Science has kind of caught up to the spiritual idea of there being multiple timelines," Howard told NPR. "Your soul is just a part of this experience. There's so much more going on than meets the eye. Therefore, there's so much more possibility to talk about these things as being natural things in existence. Just because this didn't happen in this timeline doesn't mean it won't arrive on another one, or [that] I'm not already experiencing this in another lifetime. It's okay to let go. It's okay not to be angry. It's okay that not everything is meant to be you know. That's kind of what that whole thing is about."
• At this point, Alabama Shakes were the trio of Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg and bass player Zac Cockrell. They write the music for their songs together and Howard adds the lyrics. They produced the song with Shawn Everett, who was the engineer on their 2015 Sound & Color album.
• "Another Life" became Alabama Shakes' second song to top Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay chart. Their first, "Hold On," reached #1 for a single week back in June 2012.