City and Colour Tackles Grief in New Song “Meant to Be”

The latest release from folk act City and Colour, the stage name for singer-songwriter Dallas Green, was one he wasn’t sure he could write.

“One minute I was in Sydney doing press for the record that me and Karl made together,” Green said in a statement, referring to the event that led to the hardest moment of his life and, in turn, his new single, “Meant To Be.” “The next minute, I’m finding out my best friend is gone.

“The following 24 hours were a blur,” he continued. “I boarded a plane from Sydney to the Gold Coast and made my way to the morgue to identify Karl’s body. That was the hardest moment I’ve had in my entire life. It changed me forever.”

“Meant to Be” became an elegy to his dear friend and longtime producer-engineer, Karl Bareham, who drowned while the band was touring Australia in 2019.

“My coping process when I go through something is to write about it as a way to help myself through it and then hopefully, other people can relate to it and find what they need to help them out of it too,” Green explained. “That’s how I’ve always done it. But this felt different. How do I write a song about my best friend who is gone?”

“Meant to Be” lays Green bare, putting on full display all the emotions following Bareham’s death. In the heavy song, he questions everything – his reality, his faith – singing in the chorus, Now that you’re gone / And I write down this song / I don’t believe this is how it’s meant to be.

“I remember the night that the melody came to me,” Green recalled. “As soon as I came up with the one line, ‘the sun kept on rising,’ I knew that this was the song that was going to be THAT one, about this certain topic. And then I stopped working on it right away; ‘OK, I know this is here now, but I’m going to wait…’”

“Meant To Be” is City and Colour’s first original release since his 2019 LP, A Pill For Loneliness. Listen to the song below.

Photo Courtesy of All Eyes Media