One Big Holiday

Album: It Still Moves (2003)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this upbeat rock anthem, My Morning Jacket looks back at their early days when they dreamed of making it big so they could live life like it was "one big holiday." In a Pandora Stories segment, lead singer Jim James said he had the idea for its signature riff for a while before he brought it to the band.

    "We had so much fun rocking out and figuring that song out," he recalled. "It was the notion of life just being one big holiday, like if you can escape all the mundane stuff of everyday life and always be on vacation. I was thinking a lot about that Beastie Boys line, 'Beastie Boys always on vacation!'" (From "No Sleep Till
    Brooklyn
    .")
  • Once the band actually started touring, they quickly realized that the Beastie Boys were lying - unless their definition of a vacation involved trying to sleep in a broken-down van with no heat. But My Morning Jacket made their idealistic dream a reality when they started the One Big Holiday Festival in 2013. The combined rock concert and tropical getaway was staged at the Hard Rock Riviera Maya resort in Mexico and became an annual event. In 2025, they brought the destination festival to the US for the first time, with Florida's Miramar Beach as its locale.
  • The second verse references the band's use of reverb, which was a hallmark of their early sound. For their first three albums, they recorded at their own studio on a farm in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and captured their signature reverb by taping vocals in an empty grain silo. They scaled back the effect on their subsequent albums, which took them off the farm and into professional studio spaces.
  • While the song didn't get much airplay, its popularity grew thanks to notable performances at the Bonnaroo Music Festival and a spot on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It also showed up in the movies Stick It (2006) and The Lookout (2007), as well as the TV series House ("Whatever It Takes" - 2007).
  • This is the first My Morning Jacket album to feature drummer Patrick Hallahan, James' childhood friend. He officially joined the band in 2002 after original drummer Chris "K.C." Guetig announced his departure.

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