4-15-13

Album: 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The tragedy hit the Boston-based band hard and frontman Ken Casey knew he needed to write a song about the incident, but wasn't immediately sure how do it.

    "Part of it was too soon, part of it was, like, it has to be perfect," he explained to ABC Radio. "Don't wanna be too somber to kinda drag people back into what we all went through, but not obviously make it like a heavy rock song. From a musical and a lyrical aspect, [we] just wanted it to...do justice to everybody."

    Once the band felt ready to tackle the heart-breaking event, the song came together quickly and ended up being one of Casey's favorite tracks on 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory.

    "It's almost like I feel like there's a monkey off our back, like, 'Oh, we were able to that!'" Casey said. "'Cause I feel like if we didn't, I would've always felt like we were kinda cowering away from it."
  • The Dropkick Murphys re-recorded their song "Rose Tattoo" in May 2013 with Bruce Springsteen on guest vocals as a charity single to benefit the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

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