Hear Cage the Elephant Bid Agonizing Farewell on New Song

Cage the Elephant capture the end of a long relationship on their new song, “Goodbye,” set to appear on their forthcoming album, Social Cues, out April 19th. “Goodbye” is a plaintive ballad where the spaces between distant piano notes are filled with a steady swell of strings. There’s a hard ache in singer Matt Shultz’s soft vocals as he sings, “My pretty bird, my favorite lullaby/How’d I become the thorn in your side/All your laughter turned into a cry/It’s all right, goodbye.”

“Goodbye” follows previously released Social Cues cuts “House of Glass,” “Ready to Let Go” and “Night Running,” which features Beck. Shultz wrote “Goodbye” for his wife as their seven-year relationship was ending, and in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Cage the Elephant recalled how Shultz was only able to muster one take of the vocals, which he recorded while lying down on the studio floor.

“There was a fair amount of self-medication”‰and intense isolation,” Shultz said of the erratic sessions that produced Social Cues. Speaking about how his divorce influenced the album, he added, “I saw a depth of potential evil that I had never experienced first hand.”