Spiritbox frontwoman Courtney LaPlante has revealed the manic turnaround that led to the band's surprise recent collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion being released last week. The metalcore four-piece produced a 'rock remix' of Megan's single Cobra, adding in layers of thick riffs, extra atmospheric flourishes and LaPlante's incredible vocals. As revealed in a new interview with SiriusXM’s Jose Mangin, it was Megan that had the idea for the unlikely team-up, inviting the band to send their own take on the track.
As LaPlante explains, once their version of the song was complete and back with Megan's people, it didn't take long for positive feedback to arrive.
"As soon as Michael [Stringer, Spiritbox guitarist] laid down the tracks, I got to go in and do my backup parts. Sing my part," says the singer. "And we sent it off, just to see what they think of it. And [Dan Braunstein, the track's producer] had to go...he was like, 'I gotta go guys. My whole family's over at my mom's house [for my birthday].' So we were like, 'Okay, we'll work on it again tomorrow.' Then, we heard: 'Okay, Megan's heard it. And she wants to put it out tomorrow. She likes that thing you did at the end. She wants it to be the chorus.' And she is such a good ear, you know. She's the one that that said, 'Yeah, let's have that part be the chorus as well.'
"So I only had written it as an outro," LaPlante continues. "For her to allow me to sing more in her song was so cool and generous of her. And so then we called Dan and we said, 'Dan. We're coming over to your Mom's house. You need to move this along. We're picking you up and we are going to your house, your studio at your house, and we are finishing this song! And so we picked him up, we had a piece of cake with his parents and his grandparents. And we were like, 'We gotta go, man!' We crashed his birthday party and took him away. That's how much we love Megan Thee Stallion, you know. We'll crash a birthday party for her.”
It's been a busy month for Spiritbox, who also released their new EP The Fear Of Fear on November 3. In her 8/10 review for Metal Hammer, Dannii Leivers wrote: "This is the sound of a band deciding where they want to go, unaffected by the weight of expectation, and taking us along for the ride. We can’t wait to see what happens."
