Hydrograd

Album: Hydrograd (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the title track of Stone Sour's sixth studio album. Asked by Michigan radio station WRIF where the record's name came from, frontman Corey Taylor replied:

    "I'm running through this airport in Eastern Europe. This was only a few years ago. No offense to the airport - it was kind of antiquated; they hadn't really upgraded anything. So the gate info was all on those old-school '80s block-letter, number, digital horrible Timex watch kind of readers. This would have been top of the line in Times Square in, like, 1968, let's put it that way. So not only is it impossible to read, it's also scrolling back and forth between Cyrillic and regular English letters. It's also scrolling back and forth between different languages. So my brain is trying to do geometry while also at a sprint, 'cause I don't wanna miss my plane.

    I pass one, and I look up and I could have swore it said 'Hydrograd.' And I kept running for a second, and I was, like, 'Hydrograd? Where the hell is Hydrograd? What?' So I stopped and I turned around and I went back to the gate, and I'm standing there and I'm watching it cycle through and cycle through and cycle through… Nothing. It didn't say 'Hydrograd.' It didn't even start with an 'H.' It wasn't even close. And I'm just sitting there wondering when my sanity split on me, trying to figure it out. And I walked away and I was just, like, 'Well, it's a cool name.' And I just kind of stuck it in my pocket.

    And then years later we were doing demos for [the album], and I actually named one of the songs I wrote 'Hydrograd'. And I was, like, 'You know what? That would be a good name for the album overall and just kind of run with it.' So that's it, really - it was what I saw but didn't really see."

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