Duff McKagan has released a new solo track titled “This Is the Song,” his first solo excursion since 2019.
You can watch the music video below.
The notes at the bottom of the country-tinged ballad’s YouTube page asks fans to “take action for mental health causes via Propeller,” a site that “exists to inspire activism and help build movements for change.”
McKagan has released solo music sporadically over the course of his career, beginning with 1993’s Believe in Me and continuing with a trio of albums credited to Loaded: 2001’s Dark Days, 2009’s Sick and 2011’s The Taking. He released his official sophomore solo album, the Shooter Jennings-produced Tenderness, in 2019. The country-rock LP served as a follow-up to McKagan’s 2015 book How to Be a Man (And Other Illusions) and was inspired by his travels with a reunited Guns N’ Roses.
Watch Duff McKagan Perform ‘This is the Song’
“The heartbreak, anger, fear, confusion and divide I have experienced over the last two and a half years of traveling this globe of ours coerced these words into songs that tell my truth, and one that I hope will spread and help us all,” McKagan said at the time. “I do this for my daughters … I do this for my love of where I grew up … I do this because I truly feel it must be done and said right now.”
Tenderness found McKagan tackling heavy topics such as mass shootings (“Parkland”), sexual assault (“Last September”) and opioid addiction (“Falling Down,” “Cold Outside”). Despite the dour subject matter, McKagan — and his music — remained hopeful.
“I know humanity will overcome,” he told Classic Rock in 2019. “There’s always a backlash. We’ve had to be serious since 9/11, and I think there’s going to be a point like when punk rock and disco both came out at the same time. People were done with Vietnam War and with the recessive ’70s and gas lines and union strikes, and at some point people just said, ‘Fuck this. Let’s party! Bring it on!'”
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