Daughtry returns with a ‘Cage to Rattle’
Rocker’s first album in five years features song co-written by his wife
A pro tip from Chris Daughtry: When your wife says she wrote you a song, listen.
The rocker’s first new album in five years with his eponymous band Daughtry, “Cage to Rattle” (out now), features a song co-written by his wife, Deanna, titled “As You Are.”
“She writes down poetry, and I remember one time she presented me with some lyrics, and was like, ‘If you ever want to use these for anything, or whatever,’ ” he says. “And I was kind of dismissive about it, and looking back, I’m like, ‘Oh man, that was probably the wrong move.’ ”
The next time, though, her lyrics stuck with him, and he surprised her with a finished song featuring her words. “We were living in L.A. at the time, and at this particular time, she was dealing with some things and decided to write some things down on paper and brought it to me, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna read them this time; I’m not gonna be dismissive,’ ” he says. “And I read them and I was moved, and I had this chorus for it in my head, and it had some very touching lyrics. And I went and did a demo of (“As You Are”) and didn’t really show her until it was finished, and she started crying. It was pretty special.”
Returning to rock
In the years since the 38-year-old singer/songwriter became a household name as a finalist on the fifth season of “American Idol,” he leapfrogged to fame over the cycle’s actual winner, the grayhaired soul man Taylor Hicks. And while Daughtry’s new album incorporates more soulful influences – a “Southern Gospel vibe,” he describes, with “elements of funk” – he’s a rocker through and through. The band’s enduring hits such as “It’s Not Over,” “Feels Like Tonight” and “Home” ascended the Billboard charts in the mid-2000s and powered the band’s 2016 greatest-hits album “It’s Not Over ... The Hits So Far.”
Daughtry spent the five years in between his new releases touring, recording and moving with his wife and four children – teenagers Hannah and Griffin and 8-year-old twins Addy and Noah – relocating from North Carolina to Los Angeles to Nashville.
By the time he returned to songwriting in 2016, commercial rock sounded much different from when Daughtry’s postgrunge releases won success a decade earlier, with bands like Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots topping the charts with folk-pop-EDM-ska fusions.
“It’s really hard not to fall into the trap as well, because you hear it so much, and you’re like, ‘Am I supposed to be doing that?’ So fortunately, we steered clear of that,” he says. “We wanted to make a very interesting record and hopefully deliver something that the fans appreciate and love as much as we do.”
With the release of “Cage to Rattle” wedged in between a run of international dates – “Malaysia was phenomenal,” he gushes – and a North American tour that kicked off Sunday in New Jersey, he predicts he’ll be touring “for the rest of the year and likely the beginning of next year, though I definitely think we’ll be getting back into the studio sooner rather than later.”
Is ‘Idol’ in Daughtry’s future?
What that means for any potential involvement with the rebooted “American Idol,” which was renewed for a second season on ABC this year – marking the show’s 17th season overall – is unclear, though Daughtry is open to that conversation.
“I would welcome that phone call,” he says. “I missed a lot of the last season, so I’m not sure if I would be speaking out of turn. But I’d like to think that they’re focusing more on the talent aspect of the show, as opposed to the corniness of finding people to make fun of, you know?”
That’s the same commitment to artistry he hopes comes across on “Cage to Rattle,” with the album meant to inspire “a sense of hope” in his fans.
“A lot of this record was predicated on frustration and self-doubt and secondguessing myself and being out of the game for so long, and there were a lot of times where I was wondering if we were even on to something, if what we were writing was even good enough, or what fans want to hear from us,” he says. “But at the same time, I wanted to be true to myself and put something out there that I’m artistically happy with. And I felt that we accomplished that.”