Disturbed announced their new album Divisive last week, which surprisingly revealed Heart vocalist Ann Wilson on the song "Don't Tell Me." Of course this prompted a lot of folks asking what the connection was between Wilson and Disturbed, and how that came guest spot out. In an interview with WRIF, Disturbed guitarist Dan Donegan said it was all thanks to the band's inescapable-at-the-time 2015 cover of "Sound Of Silence" and Wilson professing her love for it in an interview.
"Early in our career, we wanted to really establish ourselves without having any guests. We didn't really talk about it much, but just [felt], 'This is the band.' Not that we were ever against it, but this far along in our career… We're always pushing ourselves, trying to do stuff that's different musically. And there's so much talent out there and so many people we would love to do collaborations with now or later in our career.
"Ann Wilson had mentioned before — she tweeted about us before," he continued. "A few years back, somebody asked her in an interview or whatever if there's anything new out there, or newer, musically that she's heard that she's fan of, and she mentioned she really loved our version of 'The Sound Of Silence'. And that kind of opened the door to a social media friendship between her and [vocalist David Draiman] a bit. And then when we wrote this song, it just seemed like it would lend itself to Ann's voice and then trying to see that merge between her and David's voices together. She jumped on the opportunity. Immediately she responded, and we were, like, 'Holy shit. She just said yes to this.'"
On Wilson saying yes to the collaboration, Donegan added "it's not like she sits there and jumps on people's albums either, so we take that as a badge of honor to think that there's not many times where somebody as big a legend as she is that she would jump on any album. She doesn't have to, and she chose to be on this one. And she loves the track. And it just came together great."
Disturbed will release their new record Divisive for November 18. Pre-orders are available here, and you can check out the latest single "Unstoppable" below.
