Cold Cold Cold

Album: Tell Me I'm Pretty (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Matthew Shultz addressing a feeling of imminent doom, something he's had to deal with his whole life. The Cage the Elephant singer told Billboard magazine: "As far as I can remember, I've had this picture of this sad kind of life that I've lionized in my head over the years. When I was 10, there was this ice storm. I put on my coat, walked into the snow and pretended I was lost. I was so melancholy. I imagined myself turning into an ice sculpture. Then my dad pulled up: 'What are you doing? It's freezing outside. Get in the car.'"
  • Shultz pretty much wrote the song in one sitting. He told HMV.com: "I was just thinking about struggling with this feeling of imminent doom and seasonal depression. I wanted to write a song that was a metaphor for that but that played into the idea of needing help. So it's like throwing my hands up and saying 'That's it, take me to the hospital, someone help me.'"
  • The 1960s-set hallucinatory video was directed by Matt Shultz. It follows a young man's harrowing journey when he enters a psychiatric institution, which is filled with drugs, creepy masks and decapitation. Shultz told Rolling Stone regarding the clip's themes:

    "I think we're all very prone to subscribe to a safe, surface level pursuit of happiness, keeping our adversities out of sight out of mind, in a way. We try to fix ourselves to fit into the social norm, and it is so easy to forget that in one way or another, the broken-hearted are the beautiful ones."

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