Taking Back Sunday Drop Their First Song In Four Years, 'The One'

30 June 2023 | 3:30 pm | Mary Varvaris
Originally Appeared In

Taking Back Sunday's new song is "a sweet love song—full-on John Cusack holding a boombox".

Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday (Credit: DJay Brawner)

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Taking Back Sunday have returned with their song since 2019’s All Ready To Go and A Song To Dan, two previously unreleased songs that featured on their greatest hits compilation album, Twenty.

Their new single, The One, is a happy track old-school pop-punks might want to add to their wedding playlists now. The adorable music video finds the band – Shaun Cooper, Adam Lazzara, John Nolan and Mark O’Connell – in a big, beautiful house, reminiscing before teasing “new songs”.

Produced by Tushar Apte (Demi Lovato, Nicki Minaj) and mixed by Neal Avron (Twenty One Pilots, Fall Out Boy), The One finds the influential emo rockers band stretching their creative muscles and evolving their sound without ever losing sight of explosive riffs, affecting vocals, and epic choruses that have resonated with their audiences for so long. It’s also their first song on Fantasy Records after departing Hopeless Records in December 2019.

"The One is a sweet love song—full-on John Cusack holding a boombox,” the band said in a press release. "We’ve been waiting a long time to share this song, and we’re so excited that we finally can. We hope you love it as much as we do."

You can check out the music video below.

The band continued, “This song came from a riff that Shaun Cooper wrote the day he lost his grandmother while she was in a nursing home at the start of the Covid pandemic. Devastated with overpowering sadness, he found comfort in writing music and initially titled the riff ‘Posivibes’ in an effort to find some light through the darkness.

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“He never shared the story of the title or how that riff came together with us until after it was complete. Shaun didn’t want his story affecting the ultimate meaning of the song because it’s actually an uplifting one."

In June 2022, the band collaborated with DJ Steve Aoki on Just Us Two.

Just Us Two was a full-circle moment for Aoki, with the artist leaning into the alternative roots from the start of his career with his record label Dim Mak in his college dorm room, championing music from acts like The Kills and Bloc Party.

Adam Lazzara said, “Getting a call asking if we wanted to write with Steve Aoki was very surreal. Steve comes from a very similar background as we do, house shows, DIY labels, the whole thing.

“We were listening back to different ideas he had, and one guitar part, in particular, caught our drummer Mark’s ear. We approached it in the same way we do our own songs, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Turns out our worlds aren’t as far apart as people might think.”