Credit: Brian ZiffDespite its cheery sound, WALK THE MOON‘s latest hit “One Foot” — the lead single from their new album What If Nothing — was written during a dark period for the band. After years of touring behind their 2014 album Talking Is Hard, which spawned the mega-hit “Shut Up and Dance,” the group was exhausted, both mentally and physically.
“We had a lot of reasons that we needed to just chill for awhile,” bassist Kevin Ray tells ABC Radio. “Coming back into it, we didn’t really know what was gonna happen. We were kind of faced with a big uncertainty, and potentially a new beginning for us — kind of shedding an old skin, if you will.”
Once they started writing again, though, everything clicked back into focus.
“[We] realized that no matter what, we were gonna press on and keep going and move forward anyways, and we just had to dig deep,” Ray explains. “That’s what [‘One Foot’] is about. It comes from knowing that we have to put one foot in front of the other and just keep moving on.”
“One Foot” has also brought WALK THE MOON back to number one on Billboard‘s Alternative Songs chart. “Shut Up and Dance” previously ruled the ranking for four weeks back in 2015.
While “Shut Up and Dance” and “One Foot” are about two different things — the former details a “unique experience” frontman Nicholas Petricca had, while the latter, Ray says, is “more about what we all went through” — both songs are centered around the idea of movement.
“We’re a very physical band, we move a lot, maybe that has something subconsciously to do with it,” Ray says. “I think we’re just tapped into how we are moving and changing and evolving. So maybe there’s some connective tissue there.”
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