Apologies

Album: Alienation (2025)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Apologies" is a rock anthem by Three Days Grace centered on themes of toxic self-sabotage and the crushing weight of feeling unlovable. It serves as a dark mirror for anyone who believes they're too broken for forgiveness or affection.

    "It's a song that talks about feeling like you're too far gone to be saved, that you sometimes become a lost hope," drummer Neil Sanderson told HardDrive Radio. "Even though you have all these people around you that care about you and love you... you're almost apologizing to those people, saying, 'Hey, I appreciate the love... but I just feel too far gone.'"
  • Vocalist Adam Gontier, who has struggled with addiction in the past, noted that the song describes a universal emotional experience, stating: "Some nights, it's tough, and in some days, you've got to get through it and just look to the good and get through the tough times."

    That's familiar emotional territory for Three Days Grace, explored in earlier tracks like "Never Too Late" and "Pain." "Never Too Late offers a glimmer of hope with its refrain, "It's never too late," while "Pain" traps the listener in a cycle of anger and numbness, railing against the very feelings that consume them. "Apologies," by contrast, tilts toward resignation: Gontier and co-vocalist Matt Walst inhabit a space beyond salvation, even as they recognize the care and love surrounding them.
  • "Apologies" was written by the Three Days Grace band members with Dan Lancaster, Joe Rickard, and Simon Wilcox. "Our drummer Neil started this one with Dan Lancaster, one of the producers of this album," Gontier told Apple Music. "Dan brought in a few different things that we wouldn't normally do when we're writing, and I think you can hear that on 'Apologies'. It's a little bit outside the norm for us, because the verses feel a little poppier and then it's got a pretty deep, heavy chorus."
  • Lancaster co-produced the track with Zakk Cervini and Howard Benson. Lancaster and Cervini are longtime Bring Me The Horizon collaborators, while Benson has worked with Three Days Grace since their 2006 One-X album.
  • Sanderson and Lancaster's original demo was pitched up a lot higher and had more of a pop feel. "I just believed that song had the right food groups to really say what we were trying to say, and it also felt like it was in the wheelhouse of Three Days Grace," Sanderson told Billboard. "So I brought it to the band and we put it in a new key and changed a bunch of stuff to make it suit the band."
  • "Apologies" was released on May 9, 2025, as the second single from Three Days Grace's eighth album, Alienation. The 12-song set was written in Nashville and at guitarist Barry Stock's home studio in southern Indiana, with Dan Lancaster and Zakk Cervini co-producing at a rented house in Franklin, Tennessee. Howard Benson recorded Gontier and Brad Walst's vocals at his studio in Calabasas, California.
  • "Apologies" topped Billboard's US Mainstream Rock chart, Three Days Grace's 19th #1 on the tally.

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