Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello had teamed up with Imagine Dragons singer Dan Reynolds, Shea Diamond and the Bloody Beetroots to record the new protest song “Stand Up”. Morello co-wrote the song with each of the artists involved and with the intent of unifying people against racism.
Tom Morello said the Black Lives Matter movement helped inspire the song.
“I grew up in the tiny lily-white, archly conservative town of Libertyville, Illinois. When I was a kid, someone hung a noose in my family’s garage, there was occasional N-word calling, etc, etc. On June 6 of this year, there was a Black Lives Matter rally and march in that same town that drew over 1,000 people. It seems that the times, they are a’changin’. I was so inspired that night, I reached out to Dan from Imagine Dragons. The Bloody Beetroots and I had conjured a slamming track and within 24 hours Dan had sent back a completed vocal. We got Shea Diamond, a Black transgender woman with a long history of activism, on the track and the coalition was complete.”
Morello has said that 100% of artist proceeds from “Stand Up” will be donated to the following organizations: NAACP, Know Your Rights Camp, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute. KIDinaKORNER/Interscope will additionally donate an amount equal to the artists’ record royalties derived from streams of the track for a 3-year period.
