Songfacts®:

• Despite its breezy title, "Beaches in Tennessee" isn't a summertime road-trip song. It's Cage the Elephant frontman Matt Shultz revisiting one of the darkest chapters of his life: a lyrical reimagining of his 2023 psychiatric hospitalization.
• The song dramatizes Shultz's 2023 arrest at the Bowery Hotel in New York for possessing firearms that were only licensed in Kentucky and Tennessee. The court determined the two loaded guns the police found were the direct result of psychotic delusions caused by his prescription medication. Shultz spent nearly three months in the hospital and underwent six months of outpatient treatment before his mental clarity returned.
  
  This crisis first found its way into his songwriting on Cage the Elephant's 2024 album, Neon Pill, particularly on the title track. Written while he was still emerging from the ordeal, "Neon Pill" is clouded by confusion and paranoia. "Beaches in Tennessee" revisits the ordeal two years later with the clarity of hindsight and a much lighter heart.
• The title draws on real beaches in Tennessee, places that likely held personal meaning for Matt and his brother, Cage The Elephant guitarist Brad Shultz, who grew up just across the state line in Kentucky. Within the song, those beaches become less a geographical location than an emotional destination. It's about escaping the sterile routines of hospital life and finding your way back to yourself.
  
  "This song for me symbolizes me finally being able to move past it. It was my attempt at reclaiming the ability to write about something serious that happened in my life, from a place of genuine experience," said Matt Schultz. "Having gone through what I did, I'm grateful to have the perspective that I have now. The experience gave me a greater appreciation for my life when I came out on the other side."
• Cage The Elephant felt liberated by approaching such painful subject matter with a lighter touch. "I'm thankful for where I'm at now in this new chapter," said Matt Schultz. "As a band, we were able to reclaim the ability to write a song rooted in a difficult and turbulent real-life event but do it in a lighthearted way. I hope it helps someone else the way it helped me."
  
  That lighter musical approach arrived naturally. "Sonically, it took shape fairly quickly," Shultz explained. "We all fell in love with Brad's guitar part, and we built the track from there."
• Production came from brothers Justin Raisen and Jeremiah "Sadboy" Raisen, whose other work together includes collaborations with Charli XCX and SZA. Brad Shultz said Justin Raisen "was at the top of my list" of producers he wanted to collaborate with, and the finished track gave the band a renewed sense of creative "evolution."
• "Beaches in Tennessee" was released on July 10, 2026, as Cage the Elephant's first single after moving to the Big Loud Rock label.
• "Beaches In Tennessee" debuted at #1 on Billboard's Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, only the sixth song ever to do so in that chart's 17-year history. The song went on to rise to the top of Alternative Airplay and Adult Alternative Airplay (AAA), giving Cage the Elephant their 14th Alternative Airplay leader and their eighth Adult Alternative Airplay #1.