Through My Ray-Bans

Album: & (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Through My Ray-Bans" celebrates the camaraderie and passion Eric Church sees among his fans while performing onstage.

    Everybody's got their arms around
    Everybody else's shoulders
    Guardin' against the world outside
    Like an army of Friday night soldiers
    The battle wages tomorrow
    But tonight you don't give a damn
    Wish you could stay the way I see you
    Through my Ray-Bans


    As Church looks out at the crowd cheering back at him, he wishes the concert didn't have to end and everybody return to the real world.
  • On Sunday, October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 at the Route 91 Harvest music festival during Jason Aldean's set. Sixty concertgoers were killed and over 800 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Church had performed at the festival two days before, and when he wrote this song with Luke Laird and Barry Dean, they reflected on the tragic event. The singer dedicated "Through My Ray-Bans" to the survivors of the Route 91 mass shooting.
  • Church performed at the Grand Ole Opry just days after the Route 91 tragedy. "I looked out there, at that crowd, in that place... I was so moved by it," he said about being on stage just two days before the shootings. "I saw them with their hands in the air. I saw them with boots in the air. And what I saw, that moment in time was frozen."
  • Released on October 30, 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, the song takes on an additional poignant meaning in the absence of live shows.
  • Church first teased the song on April 18, 2020 when he used it as the backdrop of a defiant spoken-word video message. The clip finds the singer rousing his fans, saying the American people will triumph over the COVID-19 pandemic through resolve and prayer.

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