Memphis May Fire released Broken on November 16, 2018, through Rise Records. Their sixth studio album followed This Light I Hold and moved further toward commercial rock, with slower tempos and more room for Matty Mullins’ clean vocals. The record opened with “The Old Me,” a lead single rooted in the singer’s experience with anxiety and depression.
Mullins had written about those experiences before, but the emphasis on Broken was different. In a November 2018 interview with Revolver, he explained that his previous two records had concentrated on finding a way through difficult periods. For this album, he remembered how much he had needed someone to recognize what he was feeling. “I needed someone to tell me that they understood what I was going through,” he said. Recognition mattered to him as much as reassurance.
“The Old Me” gave that conflict a visual form. Its music video set Mullins against another version of himself, representing his anxious and non-anxious states. The shoot ran for 36 hours in Santa Clarita, California, with a stunt double and fight coordinator helping stage the confrontation.
“Live Another Day,” the album’s closing song, addressed people dealing with self-harm or suicidal thoughts. Mullins told Fuze that he hoped it could give those listeners renewed confidence about their future. The sleeve expressed a related idea through its broken skull and rose: he described the skull as brokenness and the flower as a sign of getting through it.
The musical changes began with a different way of writing. Mullins and guitarist Kellen McGregor brought ideas and concepts into the studio with producer Kane Churko, leaving room for him to help shape the songs as they developed. Mullins told Distorted Sound that this was their first experience bringing another writer into the partnership. They spent a couple of months in Las Vegas making the record, learning to consider another perspective without feeling obliged to accept every suggestion. Churko could question a section or suggest a change while the material was still taking shape. Mullins pointed to the twang in “You & Me” as one example of the territory they wanted to explore. He described the experiment as a way of discovering their own capabilities, and said the experience had made him interested in further co-writing. Churko ultimately shared songwriting credits with Mullins and McGregor on all 10 tracks.
Getting Broken out proved more frustrating. In an interview published by Cross Rhythms in January 2020, Mullins said the band had held the record for about a year. He described it as their biggest recording budget and producer experience, but said the way the project came together and was released hadn’t met their expectations. He also identified a concrete result: Broken had given Memphis May Fire their first experience with active rock radio, allowing them to reach listeners beyond their established underground audience. That wider reach was something the band had wanted from the record.
