Dancing With Your Shadows

Album: Drift Back (2023)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Phillip Phillips wrote this deceptively upbeat tune about learning to support his wife while she struggled with health issues. He explained in a 2023 Songfacts Podcast interview:

    "Watching her go through that is challenging for me because I'm always the person that's trying to fix things for her or trying to help fix it with her. We've been together a long time, going on 14 years, so whenever I can't fix something, it's really frustrating for me. And not trying to make it about me - the song is about her and us - but I had to learn how to accept that I can't fix it and that I just have to be there. You have to be there for her through the bad. When you get married, the vows are through thick and thin, whatever that may be. If it's just a shoulder or if it's just holding her hand or if it's stepping back and letting her have some time."
  • Phillips was 21 years old when he won season 11 of American Idol in 2012, the same year he released his debut album, The World From The Side Of The Moon. More than a decade later, Drift Back, his fourth studio release, finds him navigating his early 30s as a husband and father.
  • This originally started as a slower and moodier acoustic track with a different bridge, but Phillips wasn't satisfied with it. "It wouldn't elevate where I wanted it to, so I started playing it differently from what you hear now on the record," he told Songfacts.

    The new version started to take shape when he and producer Todd Clark started experimenting with riffs.

    "I actually wrote this whole bridge to it that was lyrics and melody, and I ended up scratching it 'cause I heard him - we were both just riffing trying to figure something out - on this bridge. He started playing [mimics riff], and I said, 'Oh man, that's freaking hooky, that's awesome.' So we threw that in there. It is a really upbeat song, but when you dig into it, it definitely has a deeper meaning to it."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Michael Bolton

Michael BoltonSongwriter Interviews

Into the vaults for this talk with Bolton from the '80s when he was a focused on writing songs for other artists.

Butch Vig

Butch VigSongwriter Interviews

The Garbage drummer/songwriter produced the Nirvana album Nevermind, and Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Siamese Dream.

Director Nick Morris ("The Final Countdown")

Director Nick Morris ("The Final Countdown")Song Writing

Nick made some of the biggest videos on MTV, including "The Final Countdown," "Heaven" and "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)."

Tom Bailey of Thompson Twins

Tom Bailey of Thompson TwinsSongwriter Interviews

Tom stopped performing Thompson Twins songs in 1987, in part because of their personal nature: "Hold Me Now" came after an argument with his bandmate/girlfriend Alannah Currie.

Lace the Music: How LSD Changed Popular Music

Lace the Music: How LSD Changed Popular MusicSong Writing

Starting in Virginia City, Nevada and rippling out to the Haight-Ashbury, LSD reshaped popular music.

Jules Shear - "All Through The Night"

Jules Shear - "All Through The Night"They're Playing My Song

Shears does very little promotion, which has kept him secluded from the spotlight. What changed when Cyndi Lauper had a hit with his song? Not much, really.