The last couple of years have been hard for everyone and absolutely devastating for some people. But while the pandemic may have kept us physically apart, we’re all united by the daily struggle of finding peace and stability in our lives. That’s the message behind “sTraNgeRs,” the new single by British rockers Bring Me The Horizon. The band debuted the song in May during a DJ set at their own Malta Weekender festival and finally released the track on July 6. It went straight into the Top 10 on the Genius Top Songs chart.
“Coming out of lockdown and the pandemic, everyone is recovering from something and I’m so aware that so many people struggle daily with differing traumas, and just wanted to stress that they’re not in this alone… and we’re a community here to help each other,” said BMTH lead singer Oli Sykes, who wrote “sTraNgeRs” with bandmates Lee Malia (guitar) and Jordan Fish (keyboards/programming) and songwriters Caroline Ailin and BloodPop. Evil Twin, Zakk Cervini, and BloodPop handled production.
The opening verse is just vocals and electric guitar. Sykes reveals himself to be in a dark place.
Maybe I’ll just be fucked up forever
Should have figured myself out by now
And I don’t want to tear myself open, no
But it’s hard to care when you bleed out
In the pre-chorus, as jittery electronic drums enter the mix, a desperate Sykes cries out for help. He feels like he’s losing himself.
So won’t you break me down, break me down
Make me get better
I confess I’m a mess, some kind of error
Well maybe I was destined to disappear
Sykes addresses BMTH’s audience in the chorus, which feels built for arenas. He knows he’s not the only one in the room having a hard time, and there’s catharsis in that realization.
We’re just a room full of strangers
Looking for something to save us
Alone together, we’re dying to live and we’re living to die
The second verse finds Sykes “walking on razors,” cursing his absentee guardian angel. Only now there’s a sense of resilience that’s carried over from the hook.
And we swore to God we’d never let this happen, no
We’ve dragged ourselves through hell and we’ll be damned if we go back
Sykes evokes The Wizard of Oz in the bridge and screams out for the kind of salvation that members of a tight-knit community—fans of a popular rock band, say—might offer one another.
No place like home
Take us back to yesterday
S.O.S
Save us from ourselves
“The song came out of a long writing trip in LA,” Sykes said of the track’s creation. “And as soon as the lyric ‘we’re just a room full of strangers’ came it took on such a deeper double meaning—how it would feel to be performing it live as that’s what it is.. all strangers connecting on this mad level… and that it was like rehab.”
“sTraNgeRs”—the group’s first non-collaborative single of the year—inspired a nightmarish music video that abstractly touches on the lyrical themes. The song is likely to appear on the next installment of BMTH’s Post Human series of EPs.
You can “Read all the lyrics to “sTraNgeRs” on Genius now.
