Heaven

Album: King (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from alternative rock band O.A.R.'s seventh studio album, King finds frontman Marc Roberge railing against those who pass judgment on people on the basis of religion. Roberge penned this rocking reggae effort after taking a break to be with his wife, who was recovering from cancer. The song was released on June 7, 2011 on Wind-Up Records.
  • When we spoke with Marc Roberge in 2014, he talked about the line "I don't want to go to heaven if I can't get it."

    "I just realized at some point that I got kind of sick and tired of everybody out there having rules about getting into a club or getting into heaven or getting into anything," he explained. "When, really, all it has to do with is living your life and being strong, so that when it's time to go, you've done your best. If they don't want me, I don't really want to be there."
  • The song was the last track recorded for the album and came from a beat - jokingly titled "New O.A.R." - that Roberge's brother-in-law played for him in October 2010. "Flash forward six months," Roberge told Billboard magazine, "and the album is pretty much done and I said, 'Let's do one more.' We were flipping through demos, and I had a demo of this beat and what I had tried singing over it just for fun, and everyone said, 'Man, this is something.' So we bounced ideas back and forth, and we just knew something that we felt told the entire story of this character and this album. It began in the driveway, and it ended with O.A.R. in the studio cutting it, just 'cause it felt right. It's funny how things like that always fall into your lap at the last minute."

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