Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-inducted, Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, performer, entrepreneur, and New York Times No.1 best- selling author Sammy Hagar has announced the release of his second studio album, Crazy Times, with his Billboard chart-topping supergroup, The Circle.
Crazy Times, finds Hagar, fellow Hall of Famer and longtime bassist Michael Anthony, Grammy-winning drummer Jason Bonham and Grammy-winning guitar virtuoso Vic Johnson change course, traveling to Nashville to record the album with 8-time Grammy Award winning producer Dave Cobb at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A. With the album due out Friday, September 23 via UMe, the band has released the first single, the single song “Crazy Times”, which you can check out below.
“This record holds up, I’m very proud of it!”
“It’s hard for me to talk about this thing with as much passion as I feel without sounding like I’m hyping it or bragging about it or trying to, you know, get people to buy it”, Sammy Hagar tells uDiscover Music in an exclusive new interview. “I love this f_king record. I mean, I just don’t, I don’t even know how the hell we made it because this band we’ve been together almost 10 years, but we’ve only recorded once before. But yeah, we did it. I think this song and this record holds up. I’m very proud of it.”
Crazy Times, the band’s long-anticipated sophomore album, is a follow-up to their much-lauded debut Space Between, a multi-category No.1 Billboard charting album. The new album will include 10 songs, nine of which Hagar wrote or co-wrote, along with a notable cover, “Pump It Up,” a 1978 song by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, from their much-acclaimed album This Year’s Model. The song “Crazy Times” was written by the whole band along with producer Dave Cobb and recorded live.
“I’ve really gotta credit Dave Cobb because I turned him down about three years ago when he first approached me to make a record”, Hagar reveals. “And I said, well, I got this band and I don’t want to compete with my classic hits, what I’ve done in the past. It’s almost impossible in that sense, but I just wanted to make a hard left and, and, and go play like almost acoustic songs with big drums and you know, kind of like the experimental things led Zeppelin and some other hard rock bands did with, with acoustic guitars…kind of Americana. Dave said, oh, I make those sort of records all the time. Let me know when you wanna make the, the definitive Sammy Hagar record!”
“He’s just a genius producer”, Hagar adds. “I’m telling you for rock country, soul. I don’t care what it is. That guy is amazing.”
“It’s definitely darker than most of what I do”
“I wrote a lot of lyrics during, during the COVID lockdown”, he reveals, speaking of the background to the song “Crazy Times”. “I couldn’t write songs during that time, but I felt a lot of things. I was writing poetry and I just went through all my notes and I found a lot of negative dark stuff, you know? And that’s not Sammy Hagar. I mean, that’s, that’s the last thing I am, you know? I’m usually Mr. Sunshine. So I didn’t mind, you know. Among my favourite bands in the world are Tool and pink Floyd and I love these dark bands, you know? That sort of thing’s not usually what I am and “Crazy Times”…well, it’s it’s not ‘dark, dark’, but it is definitely darker than most of what I do.”
For more than five decades, Sammy Hagar has been recognized as one of the best and most accomplished lead singers and songwriters in rock music. From breaking into the industry with the seminal hard rock band Montrose, to his multi-platinum solo career, to his ride as the frontman of Van Halen, Chickenfoot and his latest best-selling supergroup, The Circle, Hagar has amassed 25 Platinum albums on sales surpassing 50 million worldwide.
Crazy Times includes the following tracks:
“Intro: The Beginning Of The End”
“Slow Drain”
“Feed Your Head”
“Pump It Up”
“Be Still”
“You Get What You Pay For”
“Crazy Times!
“Funky Feng Shui”
“Father Time”
“Childhoods End”