Tom Morello Recruits All-Star Musicians, Activists For Protest Song ‘Stand Up’
The track features contributions from Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds, the Bloody Beetroots and Shea Diamond.
In a charged response to both the outrage and solidarity rising from the national reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism, Rage Against The Machine/Prophets Of Rage guitarist Tom Morello has enlisted a score of fellow artist comrades – Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds, producer The Bloody Beetroots and artist/activist Shea Diamond – to record a fiery new protest song, “Stand Up”’.
The searing “Stand Up” is a reflection of the diversity of people unifying against racism in this moment. The song is available now through KIDinaKORNER/Interscope Record and it was co-written by Morello, Reynolds, Diamond, The Bloody Beetroots, Justin Tranter and Eren Cannata and you can check it out below.
All four artists will be donating 100% of their proceeds from “Stand Up” to the following organizations: NAACP, Know Your Rights Camp, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute – all of whom Morello hails “are doing great work combating racism, injustice, and police brutality.” KIDinaKORNER/Interscope will additionally donate an amount equal to the artists’ record royalties derived from streams of the track for a 3-year period.
Of “Stand Up”s genesis, Tom Morello says: “I grew up in the tiny lily white, archly conservative town of Libertyville, Illinois. When I was a kid, someone hung a noose in my family’s garage, there was occasional N-word calling, etc, etc. On June 6 of this year, there was a Black Lives Matter rally and march in that same town that drew over 1,000 people.
“It seems that the times, they are a-changin’. I was so inspired that night, I reached out to Dan from Imagine Dragons. The Bloody Beetroots and I had conjured a slamming track and within 24 hours Dan had sent back a completed vocal. We got Shea Diamond, a Black transgender woman with a long history of activism, on the track and the coalition was complete.”
Dan Reynolds adds, “When Tom reached out to work together with Shea Diamond and The Bloody Beetroots on this track I immediately went up into my room and wrote/sang the chorus and verse that day. This country certainly needs fixing, and I believe it will take people from all sides and colors to fix it.”
