Earlier this summer, Bastille release the raucous collaboration with Graham Coxon, “What You Gonna Do???,” and today, Bastille has returned with another new single.
Titled “survivin’,” the song fins Bastille changing things up yet again, with a single that is lyrically vital and sonically intrepid about the version of ourselves we choose to give away to others. Put up against a compelling backdrop, frontman Dan Smith reaches a new level of directness and honesty, as he reflects on self-doubt and anxiety in the overwhelming sense of modern life.
Smith originally began working on “survivin'” months before the COVID-19 pandemic that turned 2020 on its head, and originally was intended to be a honest account of the highs and lows of Bastille’s career thus far. “There’d been times when I felt like I’d been in a washing machine and on a conveyor belt at the same time,” he says, “but when people asked me how I was doing, the answer was always the British cliché: ‘Yep, all good, fine.’”
He continues, “At the start of lockdown, I felt very self-conscious about having written a song that felt relevant when it wasn’t intended to be, but then I also think 2020 is the year we all stopped pretending everything’s fine.”