GAVIN ROSSDALE Explains Why It's Taken BUSH Three Decades To Release Greatest-Hits Album

BUSH frontman Gavin Rossdale spoke to Q104.3's "Jim Kerr Rock & Roll Morning Show" about the band's upcoming greatest-hits collection — "Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023", which will arrive on November 10 via Round Hill Records. Asked why it took the band three decades to release such a compilation, Rossdale said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I always saw it as a swan song and a bit of a cop-out. Well, it's not a cop-out because it's not fair, because I myself, if I got someone's 'greatest-hits' [album] growing up, it was kind of convenient. I was, like, 'Oh, convenient record.' It was super convenient. It's like a snack of the band as opposed to any deep dives. And I just was always obsessed with progress and the future and not leaning on the past and having an amazing catalog, but not leaning on it because then I sort of felt that you'd be trapped by it. And so I've always striven to write new music and not do that because I don't wanna give the wrong message, and then now I'm doing it because, like everything, its time came."

"Loaded" contains 21 tracks, including a new song, "Nowhere To Go But Everywhere", written by Rossdale. Gavin and bassist Corey Britz produced the track, which is the second to last song on "Loaded".

Regarding the writing process for "Nowhere To Go But Everywhere", Rossdale told "Jim Kerr Rock & Roll Morning Show": "What was really fun about that is that normally when I write, it's a bit of a blank slate and I'm just thinking about… usually, actually, the last few records, a live context, how am I gonna write a song that can fit [alongside the hits]. How do I write a song that can compete with those and knock them off their perch on the setlist? If I just do sort of like mid-tempo acoustic whiner ballads, I'd always be playing the old stuff and we'd skip through the new stuff. And instead I like making it more vital and sort of being surprising and do the unexpected. So with that song, it was fun to straddle all the records. And I thought nothing was more important than my friendships that I've had with my friends over the years. I've got three buddies, and we have this group chat and I was writing and I seemed to end up writing a song for them and for us and our friendship and how we've been friends we were, like, teenagers and we're still, as grown men, sending dumb memes, talking about stuff, taking the mickey out of each other. So I wrote this song about my friends."

He added: "Whenever I heard people write their songs about friends, I was, like, 'Oh my God, what a waste of time. Why would you do that?' And then there I wrote one and I shocked myself. So it has a nostalgia to me that is appealing."

"Loaded" includes iconic hits from each of BUSH's nine studio albums as well as "Mouth" (The Stingray Mix) from the 1997 remix album "Deconstructed" and a cover of THE BEATLES' "Come Together" that saw a very limited release in 2012.

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the release of BUSH's six-times-platinum debut album, "Sixteen Stone", so it's only fitting that "Loaded" explodes with five tracks from the seminal album: their debut single, "Everything Zen", "Little Things", "Machinehead" and the group's first No. 1 singles — "Comedown" and "Glycerine", which topped Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart in 1995.

Other chart-topping hits included in the collection include the Grammy-nominated "Swallowed" (from 1996's "Razorblade Suitcase"),"The Chemicals Between Us" (from 1999's "The Science Of Things"),"The Sound Of Winter" (from 2011's "The Sea Of Memories") and, from the band's 2022 album "The Art Of Survival", "More Than Machines", BUSH's seventh single to top the Active Rock Radio chart. "Bullet Holes", which figured prominently in the box office smash "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum", is one of three songs pulled from 2020's "The Kingdom".

"Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023" track listing:

01. Everything Zen
02. Little Things
03. Comedown
04. Glycerine
05. Machinehead
06. Swallowed
07. Greedy Fly
08. Mouth (The Stingray Mix)
09. The Chemicals Between Us
10. Letting The Cables Sleep
11. The People That We Love
12. Inflatable
13. The Only Way Out
14. The Sound of Winter
15. This Is War
16. Bullet Holes
17. Flowers On A Grave
18. The Kingdom
19. More Than Machines
20. Nowhere To Go But Everywhere
21. Come Together

BUSH will launch the "Nowhere To Go But Everywhere" tour, a North American headline run, on November 14 at Hard Rock Live in Orlando, Florida. BAD WOLVES and EVA UNDER FIRE will support on most dates.