HWY 666

Corey Taylor started writing this song when he was 17, jotting down some lyrics about a confrontation with the Devil at HWY 666 with his soul at stake. A sophomore at Lincoln High School in Des Moines, he scribbled the words in his English class notebook. Years later, when it came time to put together some demos for his first solo album, CMFT, the Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist came across his teenage poetry in a box tucked away at his grandmother's house. He decided to mold his verses into a song and make it the record's opening track. "I started with that one, thinking it'd be cool with a rockabilly Pantera vibe to it and kind of beefed up the story about someone turning their back on the devil when he's offering them everything," he explained to American Songwriter. "It starts the album because of the tempo, it's a stomper that gets your blood going and puts you right in the middle of it. But it was also great to start because of how old the verses were. It was like 'how far back do we want go back?' That was when I was realizing my potential and where I wanted to go with my life, so I wrote the chorus and finished it."

The story mirrors the legend of Robert Johnson. The '30s blues star reputedly made a deal with the Devil at the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49, giving up his soul in exchange for becoming a renowned musician. Unlike the blues musician, Taylor rejects Satan's advances.