We Fight

The lead single from Crooked Shadows finds Dashboard Confessional frontman Chris Carrabba focusing on a positive outlook of fighting through struggles. Speaking with Beats 1, Carrabba explained the story behind the track. "It's a weird thing when you write a song; you think you know what it's about, but you don't [really] until some months later sometimes. So, I thought for sure it was just about how I found a place in the world, which was worth fighting for, which was the music scene that I come from. I wasn't cool in school. I didn't fit in. I found this music scene and it fostered this community and it fostered the people in it. You could be black or white, you could be straight or gay, you could be a man or a woman. Everybody was equal and we were equally protected but we were equally encouraged to do something that challenged the status quo. But then the political climate has changed in such a way that, almost days after writing that song, America started to feel really regressive somehow. And all these great strides we made during the last administration had been threatened to be undone, and I realized that people have beliefs worth protecting, worth standing up for and I found a residence in that."

The song was Dashboard Confessional's first single since the release of "Belle of the Boulevard" eight years previously in 2009. The band was on hiatus between 2011 and 2015.

Carrabba explained to New Noise Magazine how the song's definition changed as he wrote it. "There's never one thing, ever, with any song I have. When I write, I either keep the news or SportsCenter on. I need some slight distraction, I guess, so I don't get bogged down. I'm not writing an essay, I'm not sitting there poring over every comma. This frees me up somehow to just let things be wrong for a minute. I can always come back and revise. I'm watching the news and writing this song. The song is ostensibly in my mind about the way I grew up, the music scene I grew up in and the social politics it taught me, but concurrent with the news that's on to my left."