Songfacts®:

• This song is about coming out from under a weight and finally feeling that pressure lifted. The lyrics was written by Pop Evil frontman Leigh Kakaty, who told Songfacts: "I love 'Breathe Again.' When we started with the demo process, I knew right away it was going to be Pop Evil, it was magical, there was something special about the song. I knew it was going to connect with our fans. 'Breathe Again' just felt different, it felt great. The music was just hitting hard. We knew that the Evil in Pop Evil, we wanted to let our metal roots shine."
• The song was recorded before the pandemic but wasn't released until November 2020, when most of the world was still under quarantine. Over the next few months, restrictions started to ease and many felt they could breathe again, possibly without a mask.
• Kakaty used the first take of his vocal, going for the raw, visceral sound over the more polished later takes.
• "Breathe Again" is the third single from Pop Evil's sixth album, Versatile. The album title reflects their diverse background and gumbo of influences. Their lineup includes a British drummer (Hayley Cramer), a Mexican guitarist (Dave Grahs), and a lead singer with a father from India and mother from Canada (Leigh Kakaty).
• When Kakaty writes a Pop Evil song, it's a kind of therapy for him... until it's released. At that point, he turns it over to the fans. "There's a limited amount of time when these songs can help me in any way before they're released to the public," he told Songfacts. "After that, the only way they help me is when I see fans being moved, and it reminds me I'm not alone. People feel like they want to breathe again too."
• The music video is the creation of the Swedish filmmaker Johan Carlén. It centers on a woman with her head trapped in device that looks like a giant Rubik's Cube if it was made for a Saw movie. Carlén explained the concept in a Songfacts behind-the-video feature: "When I sat down to come up with a video I looked for certain things in the song's lyrics to build upon. 'Breathe Again' is saying that you once could breathe free, something happened that stifled that, but you managed to break free to be able to breathe again. So that's how I came up with the concept of a person being trapped inside what is clearly not a place of her own choosing. And the cube on her head being both a symbol of something forced onto her but also serving as a visual hook."
• This climbed to #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart to become Pop Evil's sixth leader on the tally and their first since "Waking Lions" reached the summit in March 2018.