A Day to Remember Vocalist Says Metal Should Be More Like Hip-Hop

A Day to Remember frontman Jeremy McKinnon believes metal acts should take a page from hip-hop when it comes to collaborations.

During a recent appearance on the Tuna On Toast with Stryker podcast (watch below), McKinnon expressed his enthusiasm in working with creatives from outside his own band.

“I love working with everyone,” the rocker confessed. “I just love the process of writing and being inspired. And A Day to Remember is in this amazing place where everybody wants to work with us.”

“So like, why not? You know what I mean?,” McKinnon continued. “The way I look at it is like, the metal community feels so closed off sometimes. Like, ‘We can’t do that because that’s a different band. Or we can’t do this because we only sound like this.’”

READ MORE: 10 Most Unexpected Rock + Metal Collaborations

Rather than rejecting collaborations, McKinnon thinks metal would benefit from adopting rap’s approach.

“I just love how the hip-hop community is so collaborative,” he explained. “It’s like, they’re working with all these producers, people are coming in and singing on each other’s songs. They’re having massive hits together. That vibe is just so cool. And I would just love to see more of that in the metal and punk community.”

A Day to Remember Has ‘Always Been a Collaboration’

A Day to Remember recently released Big Ole Album Vol. 1. A glance at the track listing shows a variety of co-writers, including Bring Me the Horizon’s Oli Sykes and Fit for an Autopsy’s Will Putney. The involvement of these and other outside songwriters echoes McKinnon views.

“[A Day to Remember has] always been a collaboration. People just didn’t know that there was collaboration going on,” the singer noted. “Some of our biggest albums, like some of our biggest songs, the [last] two percent idea came from someone else.”

McKinnon pointed to 2010 single “Have Faith in Me” as an example.

“‘Have Faith in Me’ came from somebody just having an old demo that didn’t work out and we rewrote it. You know what I mean? And no one knows that because people just don’t look into it. But it’s, for us, it’s not something that’s super important. Like we have always been like, ‘How can we make this interesting? How can we make people listen all the way through?’ And that’s always been our approach. Just have people come in and work with us.”

McKinnon emphasized that A Day to Remember “writes every song,” but added “it’s that extra 10-20% that makes it feel different that we’re chasing down by working with other people.”