Shatter Me

The title track of Lindsey Stirling's sophomore album was a departure for the violinist and performance artist: "This song is very, very - obviously - different for a Lindsey Stirling track, because I've never written lyrics before, I've never gotten to blatantly say what I feel. I mean, all my songs have meaning behind them and I try to express that very strongly through the emotion that I want the song to feel for everyone," she said. "This time I got to literally say, 'This is what I want to share.'"

The cover of Shatter Me features Stirling as a ballerina inside the glass globe of a music box. The album has a theme of breaking free and this song tells the story of the ballerina on the cover who longs for someone to shatter the glass and let her escape; only to discover that she is the only one who can break the glass. "The whole theme of the overall album is about breaking free and learning, so it's kind of my process that I went to to rediscover who I was and be okay with that person and then love that person and share that person," said Stirling. "It all started kind of with the theme of 'Shatter Me.' I had to break free from the shell that I put over myself, and so that's why it's Shatter Me."

Halestorm's Lzzy Hale makes a guest appearance on this track. Regarding how the collaboration came about, Stirling said: " It was so important for me to find the right singer for it, because I had in my mind the idea of who I wanted. I love vocalists like Hayley Williams from Paramore and Amy Lee from Evanescence, so I really wanted a powerhouse, rock-star female vocalist." "I came across Lzzy Hale's videos and Halestorm's stuff, and I was just blown away by the energy that Lzzy has on stage, on camera, in her tracks," she continued. "I immediately got really excited and was just keeping my fingers crossed that she would have a window to come and do this with me. So I reached out to her management, and really quickly, they responded right back that Lzzy was really excited about the track." Stirling added: "I had actually never heard of Lzzy before, I'm ashamed to admit it. And it's even funnier because she had never heard of me, and we both kind of became immediate fans of each other's work."