“It’s weird for a guy from a punk and hardcore world to be talking about how powerful major labels are, but it worked for us,” McIlrath says. “It made me believe that you can write great songs, but if you don’t have a giant machine to push them to people in the right way, they might fall on deaf ears. We’d released ‘Give It All.’ It didn’t change our lives. We’d released ‘Swing Life Away.’ It didn’t change our lives. We gave those songs to this giant building in Santa Monica and it changed our fucking lives. That’s when I never looked back. I knew why I’d signed.”
