Peter Tägtgren has mapped out roughly the next year of PAIN, and it does not look like an album cycle. It looks like a slow drip of singles.
Speaking to the And Now The Band podcast after the release of "I Don't Give A Fukk" through Reigning Phoenix Music, the Swede laid out the schedule. "In a couple of months there will be another video and another song, and I think it's gonna feature a guest maybe. And that's how it's gonna look like for the next year. Every two months there will be a video and single, except in the silly seasons where I'll fuck up. Nothing in December, because that's impossible. Mariah Carey's occupying the wavelines."
The count is already set, if not guaranteed. "We have, like, five more singles that I know of that's gonna go out, and I hope everything is gonna go right, because it's not only up to me. I have a lot of people involved now. So it's not only my will."
What he will not commit to is where any of it ends up. "I don't know if these will feature on the [next PAIN] album yet. Maybe they are all standalone. They will feature other people on there as well. And every song sounds really different from the other one, so it's pretty cool."
That variance is deliberate, and he traced it back to how he absorbs music. "I kind of adapt to things. I mean, if I hear something, it doesn't have to be a metal song or anything, if I hear a cool rhythm or a cool melody, it gets into my mind and then I try to do my own version of it."
"I Don't Give A Fukk" arrived by an even blunter route. "I came up with [it] when I was on my way into the shower, because I was watching the news and I was, like, 'I don't give a fuck anymore.' So there it is. And it was just stuck."
Delivering it was the awkward part. The verses are half-spoken, which is not his register. "I'm not a talk singer or a rapper or whatever you wanna call it. So that was the most weird shit. And also I had to write different kind of words than I normally use because here it had to be more sharp and more attack in them a little bit; otherwise it gets too muddy. And I had to open my mouth when I speak." He wanted a guest to handle those verses, could not get anyone in time, and did it himself — then, as he put it, tried to pardon himself in the video by having someone else force him into it.
The song was co-written with his son, PAIN drummer Sebastian Tägtgren, and follows the band's ninth album "I Am". PAIN's live lineup is Peter on vocals and guitar, Sebastian on drums, Jonathan Olsson on bass and Sebastian Svalland on guitar.