Behind the songs: Alter Bridge - Blackbird

black bird

A shiver down my spine.

From the first second of Alter bridge's Blackbird my back arches and a big smile appears. Yes, because, from the very first notes of the arpeggio you can perceive the epic nature of this beautiful song.

Blackbird for me represents a kind of perfection because it contains all the elements that I love in a song: there is an arpeggio and a lot of melodies, beautiful lyrics with deep meaning, a vocal line with frequent changes of register, great solos and continuous changes of atmosphere. Well, kind of a perfect song, at least for what I'm looking for in music. I was talking about solos: I thought my love for the solo part was quite personal, but then I come to discover that a magazine has placed Blackbird's solo at number 1 all time.

Tremonti says that Blackbird is the very last piece written for the album of the same name and, returning to what I mentioned earlier about the meaning of the song, Myles Kennedy revealed that the song is dedicated to a guy who sold him his first guitar, one of his dear friends who fell ill and tragically passed away sometime later. The title Blackbird was borrowed from The Beatles song that this friend taught him to play. Initial arpeggio that, in fact, Myles often performs live, before starting with the song in question.

For me, this song is clearly the highest point of Alter Bridge, not only the best song of the (beautiful) record, but their best ever. And one of my all-time absolute favorites, if I may add that. 8 minutes of pure enjoyment. Song to put absolutely at sensational volumes, obviously in excellent quality and with a decent sound system. If you listen to it from the speakers of your laptop/tablet/cell phone, Karma will have its revenge.

Giovanni Gagliano

Passionate about music I wrote my first article for "Given To Rock" in 2012, reaching now 30K global followers. I am also a musician, gigging around London.

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