Shinedown released “State of My Head” as a single in 2015, following “Cut the Cord” from their fifth studio album, Threat to Survival. The song grew from a drum loop at a point when Brent Smith wanted to interrupt a writing process dominated by heavy guitars and drum patterns.
By Smith’s estimate, they were about 30 songs into writing the album when they decided to change direction. Speaking to WGRD in February 2016, he recalled reaching a point where “we all just kinda wanted to dance.” The loop gave them a different foundation, with room for the hip-hop and pop influences he heard in the finished recording. The change began with how the song moved, before the rest of its instrumentation had been settled.
Smith had described that reversal when the song premiered through USA Today. He usually started with a melody in mind; this time, the rhythm helped determine how he would sing. Writing against the drum track put the movement of the vocal at the center of the process. That account helps explain why “State of My Head” occupied different territory from the heavier material surrounding it.
Producer and cowriter Pete Nappi was part of a writing team that also included Smith, Carlo Colasacco, Jayson DeZuzio and Ethan Thompson. Nappi and Thompson had both studied at Berklee, where songwriter Kara DioGuardi helped steer their careers. As Berklee Today reported in 2016, Nappi had concentrated on film scoring and production before DioGuardi encouraged his songwriting work. When Thompson moved to Los Angeles, she suggested he connect with Nappi. Their partnership paired Nappi’s production and instrumental skills with Thompson’s singing and songwriting; “State of My Head” became one of their early chart successes.
The change in musical approach still fit the album’s preoccupation with survival. In a December 2015 interview with Classic Rock, guitarist Zach Myers described Threat to Survival as a darker record than Amaryllis, concerned with getting through circumstances people could not control. Smith later told The Pulse of Radio that “State of My Head” made him feel tougher when he listened to it. He saw its confidence as something listeners could use themselves.
Audiences first heard the recording through its August 27 premiere, before Threat to Survival arrived on September 18. The official video followed on December 1. It connected the song with physical effort and persistence, cutting between the band and football players, rodeo riders, fighters and dancers. Shinedown’s own movement toward the stage became part of that sequence, placing performance alongside the other activities.
Myers addressed the album’s stylistic range again in a 2017 interview with Rock Sins. He rejected the idea that the band began a session by deciding to write a pop song, explaining that their broader listening habits naturally entered the work. For him, songs such as “State of My Head” came from the same basic writing impulse as their earlier material, even when the results sounded different.
The song had already found a place at rock radio: “State of My Head” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart dated February 6, 2016.
