Monsters In The Stars

Album: Tiny Televisions (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Monsters In The Stars" is about the ghosts left over from the Trail of Tears, which was one of the darkest events in American history. We're talking literal ghosts here, not metaphorical ones.

    "Both of us absolutely believe in ghosts and have had numerous ghost experiences before the band, and several while touring," Elizabeth Elkins (along with Vanessa Olivarez, one half of the Granville Automatic songwriting duo) told American Songwriter: "I personally have heard ghosts and enjoy trying to figure out their stories. And if a song can keep somebody's memory, or an action or feeling, alive - that's important."
  • The Trail of Tears is referred to as a singular historical event, but really it encompassed several events spread out over years. It started with the 1830 Indian Removal Act. After that, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole Indian tribes (along with their approximately 4,000 African slaves) were forced out of their homelands and moved westward across the Mississippi and into the then-wild region called Indian Territory.

    Approximately 60,000 Native Americans in all were forced on the bitter trek. Of those, about 4,000 died on the march.

    The Trail of Tears was not a singular route but rather an umbrella term given to the multiple routes used for "Indian removal." With "Monsters In The Stars," Granville Automatic sing about the perilous marches made along those various routes.
  • This was the first single released off of Tiny Televisions. Every song on the album is about the history of Nashville, Tennessee.

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