Smash Lies

Album: Light (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the opening track from the Jewish reggae artist Matisyahu's third studio album, Light. This track originally was included on his 2008 EP Shattered.
  • This song features a densely layered hip-hop beat and even includes a little bit of Auto-Tune technology. Matisyahu joked to Rolling Stone magazine: "But it's not the Auto-Tune that all those rappers are using now. It's more of an effect on the vocal. It was the right place to use it."
  • Teen prodigy Steven McGregor, the son of famous reggae singer Freddy McGregor, produced this track in Jamaica. Matisyahu told Star Pulse: "He's a really big up-and-coming producer. He's worked on Movado and Sean Paul, does a lot of the really current dance hall out of Jamaica. Really, me and David Caan, the producer on the record, just wanted an excuse to go to Jamaica (laughs). It's a style that, I think, is really kind of futuristic. It grabs people right away. It's something that I've been wanting to do since I started, which is a song that's kind of a 'banger,' so to say. Something that you could hear on a hip hop station, or with some hardcore reggae vibe."
  • The Starpulse.com interviewer commented that the line, "Strives to be alive everyday," made him think of people who go about their daily routine and they're alive, but they're not really living. They're more like automatons. Matisyahu replied: "The concept of routine is certainly difficult and it's an issue that we all face, including myself as a touring musician. Whether it's going from city to city, doing show after show, or the regular nine to five, we all have to somehow wake ourselves up, spiritually, from the inside. People use all sorts of means to do that, like substances to jolt themselves up. Letting go of all of that is one of the lies that we can smash. When a person lets go of all their vices and all the things that they use to feel alive, that's when they come to this place, and this place is actually the meaning behind the title of the EP. Shattered. The person comes to a shattered place within themselves and they can emerge with a new life, so to speak, or a kind of real existence."

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