Rich Aucoin Tells Us “How It Breaks” (premiere)

“How It Breaks” is the new single from Rich Aucoin, the Canadian indie rock musician whose past albums have earned him wide acclaim in his home country. Leaning heavily into the tradition of protest songs, “How It Breaks” reminds us that no matter how much things change, we are eternally reminded of the inherent corruption within power structures and that the evil men do often live on and on. It’s not all dour, though. There are light and promise within Aucoin’s delivery and a sense that maybe we can break this cycle after all.

Aucoin says the song was inspired in part by David Bowie’s “Young Americans”. “I got the idea about referencing a song which is also referencing a song as that song’s bridge references the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’,” he notes. Aucoin’s tune finds time to have brushes with Aretha Franklin, Rage Against the Machine, Funkadelic, the Rolling Stones, and the production of Rihanna.

“I thought this would be a great track to re-purpose the beat from ‘Umbrella’ [with] as I weaved [together] other ideas of the familiar. I was thinking about the connection between the past and present when I wrote this. I thought the referential spirit would be an interesting thing to play off while attempting to write a protest song in the lineage of protest songs.”