Butch Walker Announces New Album; Streams New Song

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Butch Walker will release American Love Story on May 8th. Today he’s shared the new single “Pretty Crazy” and pre-orders are now up.

Today, Grammy-nominated guitar-slinger, troublemaker, raconteur and producer Butch Walker has confirmed the release of ‘American Love Story,’ a conceptual rock opera inspired by modern American times akin to Randy Newman’s 1974 classic album ‘Good Old Boys’. Walker came up with the concept for the album shortly after the 2016 election. The album is about the social and racial divide in America – inspired in part by Walker’s southern upbringing in Cartersville, Georgia, a small town on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Hear what Butch has to say about American Love Story:

“It’s not really a traditional album like I’ve made in the past. You see, a couple of years ago, I wrote and recorded this sort of “Rock Opera” love story about hate. I know, I know… CRINGY. Nobody needs a rock opera in 2020, and they aren’t exactly a popular concept. Which is exactly why I did it. Think of it as a cast of characters, all telling a sometimes harsh, sometimes funny but beautiful and bittersweet tale all wrapped up in a soundtrack that sounds like the FM radio and MTV of my younger years.”

The album is told from multiple perspectives – a racist bigot, a liberal and a young gay man growing up in the south – Walker’s characters stand in for the polarized society of modern America. From the refrain of “6 Ft Middle Aged American Man” where Walker sings, “my Jesus wore a frown and a red ball cap” to the oxymoronic lyrics of “Gridlock” “MAGA sticker on the back of Japanese cars, buddy I’m just as confused as you” to a character coming to terms with his homosexuality in Christian America on “Out In The Open” “Repeating memorized rhetoric about it being God’s way and if I didn’t follow the good book there’d be some hell to pay.”

Sonically, the album was inspired by the sounds of the radio in the late 70’s and early 80’s from Toto to the Doobie Brothers and AM Gold to Yacht Rock to super progressive New Wave. It also references popular music as varied as The Beatles White Album to Drake and Yeezy.

Rolling Stone has called Walker “one of America’s best singer-songwriters.” He’s penned choruses you can’t help but sing along to for artists ranging from Frank Turner to Taylor Swift and produced massive rock records for Weezer, Fall Out Boy as well as Green Days’ highly anticipated 2020 release Father of All Motherfuckers. Butch is currently in the studio with The Wallflowers, Billy Idol, and Jewel. In 2016 via Dangerbird Records, Walker’s most recent album, Stay Gold, debuted at #2 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart as well as #10 on the Rock Chart. It’s received broad critical acclaim, including praises from Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, The FADER, Consequence of Sound, Paste, American Songwriter, AV Club, and Esquire among many others.

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