Uploaded January 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
The song's lyrics are autobiographical, chronicling a 1985 trip that Cohn, then a struggling songwriter and singer, took to Memphis to overcome a bout of writer's block. After visiting the church where former soul singer Al Green was preaching, Elvis Presley's former home of Graceland, and a small nightclub in nearby Mississippi, as well as wandering various streets of downtown Memphis, he returned to New York and began composing the song. While writing and recording sessions continued through the late 1980s, his debut album, on which the song was the lead single, would not be released until 1991.
The song's lyrics are autobiographical, chronicling a 1985 trip that Cohn, then a struggling songwriter and singer, took to Memphis to overcome a bout of writer's block. After visiting the church where former soul singer Al Green was preaching, Elvis Presley's former home of Graceland, and a small nightclub in nearby Mississippi, as well as wandering various streets of downtown Memphis, he returned to New York and began composing the song. While writing and recording sessions continued through the late 1980s, his debut album, on which the song was the lead single, would not be released until 1991.
![45 Shinedown [PLEASE READ THE DESCRIPTION] #mentalhealthawareness](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Kv7uBrSf_Dk/mqdefault.jpg "45 Shinedown [PLEASE READ THE DESCRIPTION] #mentalhealthawareness
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45 is a song by American rock band Shinedown. The song was released on July 13, 2003, on the album Leave a Whisper. Following the albums release, 45 became a popular single. An acoustic cover of 45 was featured on the albums re-release on June 15, 2004.
45 placed twelfth among U.S. Modern Rock and third among U.S. Mainstream Rock songs after its release.
Brent Smith (the lead singer and songwriter) has stated in an interview:
The inspiration from the song really came from – I think a lot of people kinda take a literal sense because of the lyrics – but the song is basically about the day that you wake up and you look at yourself in the mirror and you finally decide that you want to try to become comfortable in your own skin, and realize that you’re gonna have to make yourself happy before you’re going to make anyone else happy. And basically, the 45 isn’t an actual literal term for a gun, I used it as a metaphor for the world, the .45 is actually the world and what it hands you every day of your life. When you get up, it’s a gift to be alive to begin with. A lot of different people, when I’ve talked about it, they said, “Do you really honestly mean that?” And I’m like, “Well, yeah.” Because I’ve been in that situation where I didn’t know if I wanted to continue going on and I didn’t know how to necessarily make myself comfortable with who I was, trying to find a way of learning more about myself. And you come from a dark place sometimes, and that’s really the reality of the song. It’s about overcoming and about moving forward. And it’s basically about understanding that it’s not always going to be good, but you really have no one to blame for yourself if you don’t move forward. That’s where the whole, “Nobody knows what I believe,” [comes from] because we’re all individuals. So that’s really where it comes from, it’s about moving on, really.")
