Pass The Baby

Album: Integrity Blues (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Frontman Jim Adkins explained the song's meaning to Rolling Stone: "'Pass the Baby' was a song that's been laying around for a while. The song itself is about manipulation and how your short-term gains sometimes come back and blossom into something that's not really what you expected or hoped for, and having to reckon with that."
  • Rolling Stone asked Adkins whether the hard-rock breakdown at the end of the song was a spontaneous thing that happened in the studio. He replied:

    "I explained to Justin [Meldal-Johnsen, producer] that the song does this thing at the end where it stays within the melodic elements that have already been established but it completely changes the vibe and intensity. And he was like, 'OK, we're definitely doing that then.'

    Plus, we just love to rock. We love to rock! Deep down inside, we're just eighth-graders who love metal, so you've got to throw a bone to that kid sometimes."
  • The Sun asked Jim Adkins if there was a particular song on Integrity Blues that Justin Meldal-Johnsen especially helped with. He replied:

    "One would be the choice to record 'Pass the Baby.' That idea had been around for a while but was too hard to find the time to complete it to start as one song and morph into a metal sludgefest with no repeating phrases. He said: 'Ok then, that's what you're doing.'"
  • This is the Integrity Blues track that Jim Adkins enjoys the most playing live. He told Artist Direct:

    "'Pass the Baby' is the one that I always like to play, just because it's a three-part song and starts with this really low bass drone, kind of Nine Inch Nails sounding thing, and then in the middle of the song it goes up to this Pink Floyd kind of acoustic part, and then it goes into, I think, the heaviest riff we've ever done in a song, so I think that one is the funnest one for me to play."

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