Song On Fire

Album: Feed The Machine (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger sings about the struggle to express what he wants to say when writing a song to a former lover that he still has feelings for. He explained how all the band members connected to the track on different levels through their own differing experiences.

    "Everyone has a need to love or be loved and we've all been hurt or felt loss," Kroeger said. "It's about your heart yearning for something that your rational mind knows is impossible to hold on to. There is a universally, haunting finality to losing love and we found 'our protagonist' (in this song) trying to reclaim it; but not knowing where to begin or that it might ultimately be in vain."
  • Many fans have speculated that Chad Kroeger wrote the song about his breakup with his former wife Avril Lavigne.
  • The song's music video was directed by frequent collaborator Nigel Dick ("Photograph," "Too Bad," "Savin' Me") and filmed in the plush forests of the Vancouver area. The clip features a lost woman running through the woods interspersed throughout with footage of the band performing. The woods serve as a metaphor for the woman's struggle to find herself as well as her way back home.

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