The Devil Wears Prada have always explored life’s extremes in their music, and certainly haven’t shied away from doing so on their new album Flowers.
The 14-track album matches bold themes with equally bold songs, where they process grief, weather struggle, and not only heal together, but creatively blossom like never before. The band stare down darkness, deal with depression, make sense of confusion, soothe anxiety, and grapple with faith, existence, and death.
At the same time, they mirror life’s ups and downs by alternating between crushing heaviness and heart-wrenching melodies. That’s something the metalcore band have focused on since the very beginning.
Their Zombie EP (2010) and Dead Throne (2011) each debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, and 2021’s ZII marked their sixth straight Top 5 entry on the Billboard Top Hard Rock Albums Chart. They have also tallied nearly a half-a-billion streams, unprecedented for most acts this heavy.
The group elevated to another stratosphere with Color Decay in 2022, selling out their biggest shows worldwide and receiving some of the highest praise of their career.
Now 20 years deep into their career together, their creativity has surged to life on their ninth full-length project, Flowers, representing perhaps their most significant creative leap forward yet. Fans immediately reacted too as The Devil Wears Prada heralded the album with “Ritual” and “For You,” reeling in tens of millions of streams and stoking anticipation.
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They properly introduce Flowers with the dual-single “Where The Flowers Never Grow” and “Wave”. The former’s bright keyboard melody blossoms out of a frenetic beat, while a thick riff buzzes underneath the bridge. Illuminated by a flurry of flickering keys and guitar, raw emotion spills from the irresistible refrain, “I fall back to what I know, that same place where the flowers never grow.” They’re using “happy” sounds to pacify pain.
Flowers is The Devil Wears Prada at their most honest, heartfelt, and here in the moment. Here, guitarist and vocalist Jeremy DePoyster and vocalist Mike Hranica break down each track on the new album.
The Devil Wears Prada’s Flowers is out now.
Flowers Track by Track:
“That Same Place”
Mike Hranica: The record starts with an instrumental introduction. I think what’s cool is that it’s Jon’s [Jonathan Gering] piano in his basement. And so much of the album was completely composed from that basement, we tracked a lot of the vocals down there and everything too. To kind of pull the curtain back for listeners, it feels very much like the home of Prada down there. And it’s cool, to me at least, to hear that in the introduction to the album.
“Where The Flowers Never Grow”
Jeremy DePoyster: This song is basically a complete 180 from Color Decay which was a really bleak and, intentionally, colourless, melancholic-sounding record. And it was all of that thematically as well. Where “The Flowers Never Grow” was one of the first songs that we wrote musically before the lyrics, just to kind of rip it open with some really major chords and some really bright-sounding happy stuff. As soon as I had been sent over the idea for the song, I was like, ‘We have to make this the most depressing song ever. Because it sounds so happy, it’ll be hilarious to have that juxtaposition’. So, the song is basically about getting to the top of this mountain that you’ve worked so hard to achieve and just realising, in many ways I don’t feel any better, I thought this was going to solve all of my problems once I finally achieved this success. It is basically revealing this place where the flowers never grow, this horrible dark place that you go to in your mind. And this song is basically introducing that the rest of the record is about that.
“Everybody Knows”
M: “Everybody Knows” is kind of like when you take it too far and everybody knows and everybody can see it, that you put yourself in that place.
J: Yeah, especially when you’ve lived this lifestyle for so long and you’re partying and stuff, you just have that realisation that, ‘Oh my god, I’m too drunk’, or whatever it is, and I’m embarrassing myself. I don’t want this, but I’m stuck here in this scenario. Maybe it’s an after-party from a show or something like that and it’s just like, ‘I have to get out of here’. It’s basically just that entire feeling.
“So Low”
M: This is more of that juxtaposition in terms of the highs being ever so high, and lows being ever so low. I think we all kind of battle with that, it’s a little cliché, but the whole thing is: don’t let the lows be too low, don’t let the highs be too high. I think that’s what the song hits at, that a balance is important and trying to find it, or not being able to have it and letting the lows get so low. Or even when the highs are high and then you kind of destroy it to be low again to get a reaction. I think the song ultimately is about finding balance…or not having balance more specifically!
“For You”
J: “For You” is a song that is about being stuck in a relationship that is so toxic for you, and basically being such a good partner and almost pathetically willing to do anything for this person, and them just treating you like absolute garbage. And unfortunately, I think that’s a story that everyone can relate to at some point. This song is about pushing that to the brink of saying, ‘I would actually die for you, and then I would even then pathetically come back and leave flowers for you at my own tomb. There is no limit to what I could do for you, and you don’t care about me at all’. And this one was actually not intended to be a single at all.
M: People in our team just said, ‘This has to be a single’. We’re like: ‘Really?’ And they said yes.
J: Our friend and photographer, she’s a dear friend of ours, and when we were working on that song, she texted me saying, ‘Look at me right now’. I looked over at her and she’s crying, and she’s like, ‘It’s real’. I was like, ‘Oh my god. Okay, well this must be good if she’s already crying from it’.
“All Out”
M: “All Out” is a diss song. I won’t say who it’s about, obviously, but it’s just about someone I used to know, and someone who just walked away without much empathy or care. And later I was all out of having any love or interest or relation to that person. Sort of like an ‘all out of fucks to give’ kind of thing about you and that person.
“Ritual”
J: “Ritual” is basically about being stuck in the monotony and the rhythm of life.
M: And it’s a tongue-in-cheek look at: if the highs and lows are too much, or what you’re dreaming of is too much? Just give it all up and then…
J: Everything will be fine! (laughs).
M: Yeah, and then you’ll be able to know everything, or there won’t be any unforeseen circumstances and whatnot. “My Paradise” later on the record looks at the mundane, or turning the mundane on its head, facing and confronting the mundane. And I think because “Ritual” was one of the first songs we did for the album, that has the first mention of that kind of routine.
“When You’re Gone”
J: “When You’re Gone “is a love song that is meant to reassure someone when there is a lot of distance and you’ve been apart from one another. I had been apart from my wife, who also does the same thing as this, for a long time, and I basically just wanted to express that everything’s going to be fine. And then also touch on some of the less happy things that you think during those times. There’s also the middle part where Mike is basically reassuring this person, ‘I know it hurts, but it’s all going to be okay’. The song sounds really dark, but the theme of the song is meant to be comforting.
“The Sky Behind The Rain”
M: This is the second instrumental one. I mean, the first one isn’t entirely instrumental, there is a voice. But this one’s just a breath, there are a lot of songs on the album, and it’s just a little bit of a reprieve to bring it down for a second before bringing it back up.
“The Silence”
J: That previous interlude kind of signals where things are going to go. I feel like the first half of the record is trying to figure out all these feelings, and “The Silence” is sort of the beginning of just throwing yourself off the edge into horrible ways just to try and handle your problems. It’s basically about, ‘You know what? I’m just going to start doing the same old patterns I always do. I’m going back to the bar and we’re going to handle it this way’. And it speaks to how horrible that feels when you realise that that’s what you’re doing again.
“Eyes”
M: Eyes is a look at religion to some degree. I find that the topic is way overdone, and as a band that was proudly a Christian band for so long, I think it was very predictable to be like. ‘Hey, we’re not a Christian band anymore’. And this song is as close as it gets to confirming that within the music, basically this religion thing, these confines, this devil and God thing, thinking you’re buying into something that ultimately is something else entirely. And just desiring vision and clarity to that which you thought you were seeing.
“Cure Me”
J: “Cure Me” is sort of in the same vein of “The Silence”, but with more understanding. “The Silence” is chaotic, and “Cure Me” is basically saying, ‘All of these other remedies, whether it’s drinking or drugs or patterns or whatever they are…these things aren’t actually fixing me, and I realise that now and I want to be fixed’. Basically the same way that “Eyes” is begging, ‘Please give me the vision to be able to see what I’m supposed to do’; “Cure Me” is sort of saying, ‘Maybe there’s no fixing this?’. And it’s sort of transitioning to reckoning with things. Instead, you’ve realised there’s some things in your late 30s and early 40s that just might never change, and I’ll have to deal with that now instead of trying to fix it.
M: Yeah, I think the world very much sells you on, ‘Hey, you can be perfect’, or you can figure this out or be this, or whatever it might be. And I think “Cure Me” is saying, ‘I don’t want to do that, and I don’t think that’s fake. I’m fine being okay with not being okay’. A lot of the album is a big ‘okay not being okay’. I think “Cure Me” is a fun way to look at it as far as I’ve been sold these medicines, or I’ve been sold all these other things; but I’m okay not being okay.
“Wave”
J: Wave is kind of looking at trying to exist with this toxic positivity, saying, ‘I’m just going to ride the wave and whatever happens, happens’. And then sort of realising or admitting that isn’t working, and that no matter what, even if that’s what you’re saying on the surface, there’s this whole underneath the water experience happening where it’s like, ‘That’s just what I’m saying. That’s not how I actually feel’.
“My Paradise”
M: Like I mentioned earlier about the mundane and whatnot, the chorus of this really just hits it on the head, ‘Maybe this mediocrity is my paradise’. And I think that’s finding the good in the routine, and in the normal and in the ordinary, and that maybe it doesn’t take all these amazing things hitting you all the time to feel happy. Maybe there’s happiness also in just taking pleasure in the little things, in the ordinary things, and in what might be considered mediocre.
J: Yeah, I think we’ve had so many highlights throughout our career and they continue to become these new heights that you’re trying to get to. But I think because we have these friendships that exist, and we know each other’s partners and families and things like that, you start to see, ‘Oh, that is the thing that makes me happiest’. And those other things are just bonuses. And even when they crash down, it can’t really hurt you if you have peace in your life, if you’re seeing those things as a bonus instead of having those other things be your source of validation and happiness.
