Chris Stapleton’s New ‘Watch You Burn’ Is a ‘Therapeutic’ Song About the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting
On Oct. 1, 2017, the country music community, and the world, were rocked by a mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Nev. Fifty-nine people were killed and hundreds more were injured when a gunman opened fire from a nearby hotel during during Jason Aldean's headlining set on the festival's final night.
The tragedy left the genre's performers, including Chris Stapleton, reeling. In fact, the singer says he wrote one of the songs on his upcoming album, Starting Over, in response to the shooting.
"Watch You Burn" begins with the lines "Only a coward would pick up a gun / And shoot up a crowd trying to have fun," according an interview Stapleton gave CBS This Morning. The singer says that writing the song was "therapeutic," as he processed his emotions about the tragedy.
"It's a powerful number to me that conveys the sentiment, 'Hey, let's cut the evil s--t out,'" he explains. "It's a plea in some ways."
Stapleton's Starting Over, his fourth studio album, is due for release on Nov. 13. The 14-track record consists of 11 brand-new originals and three covers: John Fogerty's "Joy of My Life" and Guy Clark's "Old Friends" and "Worry B Gone." Stapleton kicked off his next album cycle by sharing the project's title track and first single.
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