Songfacts®:

• "Planet Zero" is Shinedown's take on cancel culture. The stomping heavy-rock track is a warning to everyone not to shut down those we disagree with. If we do, we risk losing empathy, respect for one another, and our ability to communicate. The better way is to bite your tongue when someone states a viewpont that is against the prevailing ideology. Then we will unify in a way that leads to actual progress and understanding.
  
  "'Planet Zero' is a song that is giving power back to the individual and back to people from all walks of life," vocalist Brent Smith told American Songwriter.
• The song originated early in the COVID-19 pandemic when Shinedown bassist Eric Bass began referring to the United States as "planet zero."
  
  "That was my nickname for it," he told Billboard. "It seemed like there was zero intelligence, zero tolerance for anybody's opinion, zero accountability for anything. We kinda looked at each other and were like, 'Let's write a song about what's going on on planet zero.'"
• Shinedown released the explosive track on January 26, 2022. They performed "Planet Zero" live for the first time on the same day at the opening show of the band's Shinedown Live In Concert tour at The Warfield in San Francisco, California.
• "Planet Zero" is the title track and lead single of Shinedown's seventh album. Bass said that Planet Zero and its title track are "a glimpse into the future if we continue with the way we're treating each other. This record is a warning, in a lot of ways, to everyone. It's not a record for the right, it's not a record for the left... for Black, white, Asian, Hispanic. It's a record for all of us."
• Shinedown wrote and recorded Planet Zero during the pandemic in Bass' newly built Big Animal Studio in Charleston, South Carolina. Bass produced and mixed the record, as he did with its predecessor, 2018's Attention Attention.
• The song climbed to #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay Chart. Shinedown's 17th chart-topper, it broke a record for the most visits to the summit in the 40-year history of the tally.