Chris Daughtry recently discussed his vision for reaching the level of production seen in Ronnie Radke’s projects during an appearance on Jamey Jasta’s The Jasta Show.
“When we wrote ‘Artificial,’ it was just like, ‘Dude, this feels like the freshest sh*t we’ve ever written’ and I don’t know how people are going to react to this but I know this is my favorite thing I’ve ever done,” the frontman said. “So I say, we pump the brakes on the rest right now and we turn this in, get it mixed, mastered, and ready to go.”
He continued, “I think they just couldn’t help but believe my excitement in it and I even called Scott Borchetta, the head of the label and I was like, ‘Look here’s my vision for the video. Here’s my vision for the song. I think we’re touching on something that no one’s talking about right now and this AI stuff is about to break loose in a big way and I feel like we need to be ahead of the curb on this.'”
“He was like, ‘Dude, I am full aware of all of that stuff. I read up on it all the time and I think you’re absolutely right. Let’s go. let’s be loud about it.’ And then, I had to convince him to spend 100 grand on a video [laughs],” Daughtry revealed the answer of the head of the label.
The singer added, “I was like, ‘Picture ‘Terminator” and we saw these videos that Ronnie Radke was putting out and I’m like, ‘These things look so expensive. That’s what we’re up against here. We got to really put in the work here and really put out something that’s visually compelling.'”
In August 2023, Daughtry released the single ‘Artificial.’ On February 9, 2024, the song topped Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. “It’s like pre-‘American Idol’ days,” Daughtry told Loudwire Nights the day ‘Artificial’ came out. “This was always the goal. It feels good. It feels like I’m back at home.”
He also said, “People are literally writing lyrics with this thing. We started seeing how rudimentary these lyrics were, like, I’ve heard this before, there’s nothing original here. Yeah, it’s writing you a song, but there’s no artistic soul behind it.”
Before ‘Artificial,’ Daughtry’s highest-charting song on Mainstream Rock Airplay was ‘Heavy Is the Crown,’ which reached Number 4 in 2021.