Rx (Medicate)

Album: Wake Up Call (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song addresses America's over-dependence on prescription drugs. Frontman Tyler Connolly explained to Billboard:

    "I really wanted to discuss how messed up America is with this prescription drug thing. When I got divorced, I went and saw a therapist and the first thing she said was, 'I want to put you on some beta blockers or some sort of anti-depressant stuff' and I'm like, 'No! No Way! What? How is that the first thing you want to do?' I just feel like something's wrong and I felt like the song needed to be written and people needed to hear it."

    Connolly added that he felt the song's message was even more important following the death of Chris Cornell, of which the news broke about during the sessions for creating the song's music video.

    "It seems like every week something terrible is happening. I mean, Chris Cornell... and when we shot the video for it all these directors we talked to were like, 'Oh yeah, I had a huge prescription drug problem, so this hits home' and all that stuff. So it's a really important song."
  • The song features a more modern pop leaning sound than the band's previous heavier, hard rock music. The change in instrumentation was a result of a friend of Connolly's suggesting he take up playing piano and the Theory of a Deadman frontman enjoyed how the instrument forced him to write music differently than he had previously on guitar. He explained:

    "I got this beautiful piano and I put it in my house and just started playing and writing songs like I'd never written songs before. And the songs were so different and the lyrics were so different. It came from a place of complete freedom. It didn't come from a place of, 'Where's music at right now? What's rock doing?' It was just me sitting at a piano and playing chords and notes and then all of a sudden I come up with one song idea after another.

    To me this is the most exciting writing process and funnest record I've ever done... I told our management and label (Atlantic) this wasn't a conscious thing, I wasn't like, 'I'm sick of rock. I want to change.' It was the opposite. It wasn't a conscious thing. It was just me finding a place of freedom or happiness maybe. Something was happening that was great, in my opinion."

Comments: 5

  • Connor Ayotte from Edmonton Alberta. From Calgary AlbertaI remember writing a song like that down on the back of a Molson Canadian beer box back in 2015 when I was at one of the lowest parts of my life. Drinking and smoking my life away. I had enough and rather than acting out I decided to write something, and the only thing I could find was a empty beer box from the night before.I ended up moving out of the place I was staying and I left the part of the box that I had written it on the dresser and what do you know... The first time I heard that song I was in the remand center and I was like deja vu....
  • Billy Dwayne from Bakersfield CaliforniaI just have to say this song helped me motivate to save my life YES!!! I SAID IT!! THIS SONG SAVED MY LIFE!!! I I was on pain prescription medication for 10 years I have been clean for 3 years. Every time I hear the song I still break out in tears. Thank you.
  • Wes from Wadsworth OhioThis song baught me yo see what I had become and helped me put prescription drugs in my past indefinitely I do not take any prescription drug whatsoever I do not take any prescriptions whatsoever
  • Monnie from KsI want the band to recognize and realize some prescription pain meds are not only beneficial but in many cases, life saving. Millions have died by their own hands because they have been abandoned because they were on pain medication for serious pain conditions. Please, show that you know this.
  • Laurel Ann Hilvety from Herrick Illi get the song that is like me when i get bully because i have a leg problem it is called heredity spastic pair of paraplegia that what makes me soooo different.
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